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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Patriot Scientific - PTSC -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bob who wrote (4662)	4/2/1998 10:31:00 AM
From: cksla	Respond to of 8581

bob- that explains this: IC Selector EDA Tools Network Publications EE Times Electronic Buyers' News Semiconductor Business News Product File Posted: 3:00 p.m. EST, 4/1/98 Microsoft to take Windows CE into "hard" real-time world By Alexander Wolfe REDMOND, Wash. - In a frontal assault on the embedded-systems market, Microsoft Corp. will revamp its Windows CE operating system to include "hard" real-time features which can support time-critical applications in process control, data acquisition and telecommunications, EE Times has learned at the Embedded Systems Conference Spring. Microsoft will disclose its plans next Monday, April 6, at its Windows CE Developer's Conference in San Jose, Calif., sources close to the company said. "This will put competitive pressure on the competing real-time operating systems," said Paul Zorfass, embedded analyst at International Data Corp. (Framingham, Mass.). To date, CE has been viewed largely as an OS that's best suited for handheld PCs and other applications that can get by with the relatively laggard interrupt-response times common to the PC world. But Microsoft has acknowledged that the current release of CE can't deliver the guaranteed, ultra-fast interrupt-response times - features known as determinism and low latency - required for heavy duty "hard" real-time apps. Accordingly, Microsoft will add a host of specific new features into the next release of CE to implement hard real-time support. Leading the list is a new prioritization scheme, which will boost CE's current five priority levels to 32 different priority levels. Microsoft will also add a real-time clock, support for thread-based device drivers, settable device-driver priorities, OS-level timing diagnostics, DLL mechanisms for real-time threads, semaphores and real-time isolation for non-real-time threads. It's not clear when Microsoft's beefed up version of CE will be available, but code is not expected before the end of the year. Once it hits the market, it could constitute potent competition for long-standing RTOSes such as QNX from QNX Software Systems Ltd., VxWorks from Wind River Systems Inc., pSOS from Integrated Systems Inc., OS-9 from Microware Systems, LynxOS from Lynx Real-Time Systems Inc. and VRTX from the Microtec division of Mentor Graphics Corp. Perhaps to cover their bases, many of the traditional RTOS vendors have also aligned with Microsoft to deliver support to existing CE developers. For example, Microtec said it plans to adapt its XRAY debugger for use with CE. In addition, at next week's CE conference, Integrated Systems will disclose a systems-integration agreement with Microsoft under which the company will combine its real-time pSOS operating system with CE, for "developers who want to blend the determinism of an RTOS with the ease-of-programmability of Windows CE," an Integrated Systems official said.

To: bob who wrote (4662)	4/2/1998 5:55:00 PM
From: J.S.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8581

Bob, You'll have to excuse me but I have not had a good April fools! It sure seems we are grasping at straws here. Is this what potential contracts mean? Just because Intel does not get a contract, we should rejoice because that means PTSC is going to get an opportunity! All this talk of pending contracts is getting me nervous. It makes me suspect that we have to use this translation: "a lead" = they passed by our booth "a potential contract" = they took some literature "a contact shortly" = they tested a develepment board and let us bid on a contact. I hope I am wrong! Joe