MSFT will dominate set-top box OS, part IV
Improved set-top boxes are another arena in which Microsoft wants success for its system
software. Consumer equipment of this kind lets people browse the Web at home on their
television sets. Last year, the software giant bought market leader WebTV Networks Inc.,
Palo Alto, Calif., and is now planning to put Windows CE in the next generation of set-tops.
Further, it has licensed Windows CE to Tele-Communications Inc., the largest cable operator
in the United States, for use in its set-top box.
The Englewood, Colo., company is not committed to a CE set-top box alone. It has also
licensed PersonalJava, from Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, Calif., for possible use in
a set-top that would run small applications--so-called applets--written in Java. At last
month's National Association of Broadcasters Convention in Las Vegas, Nev., Sony Corp.,
Parkridge, N.J., and Microsoft announced plans to collaborate on future products involving
Windows CE and Sony's Home Networking Module for consumer electronics.
Collision course
Windows CE, a totally new RTOS, sets Microsoft at odds with many vendors of real-time
system software, most of whom are small and obscure. A Java machine to run on top of CE
adds insult to injury; Microsoft is the first licensee of a new Java virtual machine, built from
scratch by Hewlett-Packard Co., for both consumer applications and computer peripherals.
RTOS vendors have found an ally in Sun Microsystems. Sun's support for operating systems
from Acorn Computers, Geoworks, Lucent Technologies, Mentor Graphics' Microtec division,
Microware Systems, QNX Software Systems, and Wind River Systems, among others, takes
the form of PersonalJava for consumer devices. PersonalJava is an environment that tailors an
RTOS to the types of tasks that consumer devices will perform using Java [Fig. 6]. Because it
offers a standard, open environment, PersonalJava ensures that RTOS need not be a
one-vendor market; many can coexist profitably.
To repeat, Windows CE is an RTOS, like the products with which it competes and unlike
Windows 95 and NT, which are general-purpose operating systems. In some respects,
though, it resembles Windows NT. Like NT, CE is designed to run on other microprocessor
architectures besides Intel's. It supports ARM and StrongARM chips from ARM and Digital
Equipment; MIPS-based designs from NEC, Philips, and Toshiba; the PowerPC from
Motorola, Hitachi's SH3, and others. |
