Here is another article which, though a few months old, addresses some of the points raised on this thread recently:
June 07, 1999, Issue: 1064
Section: News
Solution for info appliances rattles RTOS world -- Microsoft to lift lid on real-time WinCE
Alexander Wolfe
Denver - Microsoft will roil the real-time market this week when it unveils the first cut of its new, fast-response version of Windows CE. Microsoft will roll out the software, code-named Cedar, at its Windows CE Developers Conference, here.
The software giant is throwing its hat into the ring at a time when all the vendors of real-time operating systems (RTOSes) are aiming to deliver technology that can support the emerging world of Internet-aware information appliances. Initial products in that arena include digital cameras, smart phones and car-navigation systems.
Microsoft's push for CE along with archrival Sun Microsystems' launch of EmbeddedJava have changed the embedded market equation by offering big promises to developers. Though the technologies have been slow coming to market, the presence of the two software titans in the embedded arena has forced the traditional RTOS vendors to fight back with more aggressive marketing messages and better development tools.
Consider the host of changes in recent months:
Just last week, RTOS powerhouse Wind River Systems (Alameda, Calif.) announced plans to change its business model, in a bid to position itself for the post-PC era.
Late last year, another major RTOS house, Integrated Systems Inc., hired a new chief executive officer. Charles Bosenberg was given a mandate to sort out the company's far-flung operations and focus its strategy.
A third company, QNX Software Systems Ltd., scored an earlier post-PC design win when its RTOS was tapped by French software house BCI to control a mission-critical car navigation system.
Finally, Mentor Graphics' Microtec division-like many other software vendors-is competing with Microsoft while also cooperating on some fronts. Mentor has its bases covered by offering its flagship Xray debugging tool for use with CE.
Driving such changes forward is a new conventional wisdom that a major "step-function" change has occurred in terms of complexity, driven by the Internet and 32-bit microprocessors. As a result, there are fewer vendors who can competently supply developers the technology they need to build embedded systems. Such thinking also foreshadows a painful result: a shakeout within the RTOS world.
Despite its delays, Microsoft intends to enter, not exit, the RTOS space. A year ago, the company promised to tough up CE from an OS for palmtops into a battle-hardened RTOS, and a full-blown beta version had been slated for release this spring. Microsoft missed that deadline, prompting speculation that it was having difficulties rearchitecting CE to deliver interrupt response times as fast as 50 microseconds.
Not so, said Microsoft officials. "Cedar is a developer's preview-not quite a beta [release], more like a proof of existence," said Franklin Fite, general manager of Windows CE for Microsoft. He noted that Cedar does incorporate some "hard" real-time features.
Cedar is the precursor of what will officially be called CE 3.0. CE's hard real-time features are intended to support time-critical applications in process control, data acquisition and telecommunications.
Fite added that "Cedar development is ongoing" and the company anticipates shipment of the production release of CE 3.0 by the end of the year.
But Microsoft's competitors aren't cutting it any slack.
"I don't think it [CE] has had nearly as big an effect as we thought it might," said Jerry Fiddler, chairman of Wind River Systems. "In terms of the real-time release, Microsoft has a number of weaknesses. One of them is product. They'll work to improve that; that's not surprising. But they've also got real issues with the business model: What do they sell it for? What resources does it require?
"The reality is that today, if you put Windows CE in your product, you have to raise the price of your product a lot," Fiddler continued. "That's not only because of the royalties Microsoft charges, but also because of the resources that are required. You need a bigger computer and you need more memory."
How usable?
While analysts are more neutral, they nevertheless believe that Microsoft does have some work to do. "The area they need to address is usability," said Paul Zorfass, embedded analyst at IDC/FTI (Framingham, Mass.). "Does CE have the right characteristics for the small-footprint, small-power marketplace?"
Zorfass believes Microsoft will use its marketing heft to get embedded developers to consider CE. However, other issues remain. "There's a need for firmer release dates that don't move around," Zorfass said. "That's critical."
The analyst also thinks Microsoft should make it clearer to developers how to migrate to CE from legacy systems. That's a technical challenge of increasing importance as embedded CPUs proliferate and companies move from 8- and 16-bit designs to 32-bit processors.
But Microsoft's most burning challenge will be meeting the high technical watermark it set for itself a year ago, when it first tipped plans for a Windows CE 3.0 equipped with real-time capabilities.
At first glance, CE 3.0 should be more adept at handling high-end embedded applications than it will be when running on less-than-hefty processors. Microsoft had promised that it would deliver a 50-microseconds guaranteed interrupt-response time. According to Microsoft's Fite, Cedar meets that goal for some processors-he pointed to a 166-MHz StrongARM as an example-but not for all. (Cedar also will run on all the standard CE platforms, including X86, SH and MIPS.)
Microsoft's mention of Strong-ARM conjures up an interesting connection, because Intel (which purchased StrongARM from Digital Semiconductor) has begun aggressively marketing the chip for embedded applications. StrongARM, paired with CE 3.0, could be a powerful player in high-end embedded or board-level applications.
Communications is another new area Microsoft is plowing with 3.0. Such features will put 3.0 in league with other RTOSes, which over the past year have added support for Web access and Internet connections. Specifically, 3.0 will include an HTTP server component that will allow interaction with the Web. It will also support the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and the telephony API (TAPI).
In terms of real-time support, CE 3.0 will include nested interrupts, which will enable the kernel of the operating system to simultaneously handle multiple interrupts. In addition, 3.0 will add a whopping 248 new priority levels, moving the total number to 256 from the current eight. (However, Cedar will implement only 32 priority levels.)
Also, size limits on the object store will be increased from 16 Mbytes to 256 Mbytes.
Marketing meat
While Microsoft hypes the technical capabilities of Cedar at its conference this week, it is also going to talk about its market strategy. "We are going to talk about information appliances," said Microsoft's Fite. "We will also target specific vertical industries."
(One twist is that, according to sources, two parallel CE efforts are under way at Microsoft. One focuses on the operating system, the second on platforms such as the handheld PC.)
The information-appliances banner will also be raised in two weeks by Sun Microsystems, at its JavaOne conference in San Francisco. Indeed, the info-appliance part of Microsoft's strategy has become red meat to its competitors.
A case in point is Wind River, which is making a big move to embrace the emerging "post-PC" world. Last week the company said it was changing its business model. Until now, developers had been required to license the company's Tornado family of tools and VxWorks RTOS on a per-project basis.
Indeed, Wind River is credited as the first company in the RTOS field to offer tools on a project basis-a move that broadened the embedded software market when it was initiated some five years ago. Now, however, time-to-market issues have pressed the company to remove that per-project stricture and replace it with a more flexible per-seat model.
"It's driven by the way the business is going, which is toward a much more mass market," said Wind River's Fiddler. The company currently has a lot of customers in the telecommunications arena, where the Internet infrastructure is being built up.
Moving forward, Fiddler sees ample new opportunities in information appliances. "It's a much younger market, but much higher growth," he said. "Today, nobody's getting much revenue out of it, but I think that will change pretty quickly."
Other vendors see CE as a force for market segmentation. "CE will have aspects of a real-time system and a relatively large footprint," said Joseph Addiego, vice president at ISI. "But for designers trying to save the last nickel, they'll be looking for smaller OSes for hard real-time and custom board development."
That's why ISI is keeping its focus on custom-board apps in areas ranging from communications and consumer electronics to office automation. "We believe we're going to be complementary to CE," said Addiego. He also predicts the embedded info-appliance market will break into subsegments, based on the memory requirements of the devices being designed.
Copyright ® 1999 CMP Media Inc.
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