Microsoft Gives Full Access to Win CE Kernel


Update includes Visual Studio Professional Platform Builder


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November 15, 2006 —  Earlier this month, Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Embedded CE 6.0, the company’s platform for real-time operating systems, as a sort of 10th anniversary present to the Windows Embedded community.

The new release of CE marks a milestone in Microsoft’s commitment to the company’s shared source initiative. For the first time, 100 percent of the kernel will be available to device makers for full source code access, allowing modification and redistribution without any compulsion to share the final designs. This amounts to an increase of 1.4 million lines of shared code over the 2.5 million lines of CE 5.0 code that were available.

Another first for CE 6.0 is the inclusion of Visual Studio 2005 Professional, including the embedded-specific Platform Builder for CE plug-in, giving developers a single tool for end-to-end development of embedded applications. Platform Builder is updated in this release with runtime licensing analysis, a new ARM device emulator, improved compilers and editors, and post-mortem debugging features.

The CE kernel was reworked in this release with an eye to future-proofing: The new release supports 32,000 simultaneous processes and 2GB of virtual memory address space without compromising the real-time capabilities of the operating system, allowing developers to incorporate increasingly complex applications into devices without concern for device headroom. The new release adds a filesystem designed to support new storage media, larger file sizes and encryption of removable media for security.

CE 6.0 allows developers to create digital video recorders, IP-enabled set-top boxes such as those used by Microsoft TV, and networked media devices with multimedia capabilities using the DVR and Windows Media Connect components. The forthcoming Zune music player uses CE by design. Jason Stolarczyk, marketing manager for the Windows Embedded Devices division, argued, “Why reinvent the wheel when you’ve got the best thing under your roof?”

The new release is also aimed at the makers of media devices for business, and includes the Windows Network Projector component designed to facilitate the building of projectors that support Windows Vista clients over wireless connections.

But what may be the most dramatic addition to the CE toolkit in version 6 is the debut of a so-called “Cellcore” stack supporting cell voice and data, targeted at devices such as parking meters and vending machines that would access the “mobile” telephone network for machine-to-machine connections, whether for inventory management or transactional use.

Device makers including Advantech, Commodore International, General Software, Intelligent Instruments, Micros Systems, Unitech and Wyse Technology are expected to bring products utilizing the new technology to market this quarter.





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