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Microsoft wants to make its Windows CE operating system more capable in the new generation of specialized computing products.
The move, announced today, is meant to make the company's device operating system more capable in real-time and top-priority functions in applications such as car navigation systems, telecom switches, and other embedded systems.
The company's announcement did not discuss the OS and its changing role in the environment of the TV cable set-top box, one of Windows CE's most anticipated applications in the age of digital TV.
"Our goal is to create faster response times," said Harel Kodesh, general manager of consumer appliances at Microsoft, in a statement. The company plans to achieve that through the addition of "hard real-time capabilities" such as "nested interrupts, better thread response, [and] additional task priorities."
Nested interrupts allow operating system "interrupts," which have low- or high-priority levels, to be serviced immediately when the interrupt's priority is urgent. Thread response pertains to the immediacy, or latency, with which tasking threads are taken up by the processor. The company hopes to achieve sub-50-microsecond thread latencies for its OS.
Windows CE is aimed at such computing environments as consumer devices, handheld computers and set-top boxes. On the set-top and in handheld devices, "boot-up" time needs to be short and there is much less tolerance for system crashes. Tasks also typically follow strict scheduling demanding fast system response.
The company said the changes will make Windows CE better prepared for "embedded" applications including robotics, test and measurement devices, and programmable logic controllers.
But amid the upgrade plans, oberservers say the OS still requires a significant overhaul to adapt to the specific demands of the set-top box.
"There's certain functionality that you have to have in a cable set-top," said Ken Morse, chief technical officer for set-top operating system vendor PowerTV. Windows CE "[doesn't] know how to tune TV stations, for example. Under the covers, there's a lot of work that goes on ... it sounds so simple, but it's not." Another requirement of a set-top operating system is the ability to allocate different cable bandwidth for different functions, he said.
In fact, the system has been so unprepared to deal with the set-top box, says industry analyst Gerry Kaufhold, that Microsoft will eventually be forced to purchase a new operating system "kernel" for Windows CE, and wrap Windows functionality around it.
"I don't think Window CE has gotten to the point where it's robust at being able to do [many set-top functions]," Kaufhold said. The time it would take the company to learn about and produce a whole new kind of operating system would be better spent adapting the Windows set of application-program interfaces to another vendor's existing real-time kernel, Kaufhold said.
"Why bother reinventing the wheel when you can buy an RTOS [real-time operating system] that already does those things?" Kaufhold noted.
But Microsoft seems content with its plan for now. "I will say that Windows CE represents a huge investment for Microsoft -- and there are hundreds of developers working on it," said Mike Conte, the company's group manager for digital TV. But he disagreed that a complete overhaul of the system's core functionality is necessary.
A design review for the revamped OS will be held this summer to incorporate industry feedback into the final architecture. Final release is scheduled for the second quarter of 1999.
