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Technology Stocks : Wind River going up, up, up! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jonathan Lester who wrote (4167)	1/28/1999 7:49:00 PM
From: William Sheppard	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10309

Jonathan Lester wrote: Does Sun's Java or Jini products obviate the need for a RTOS? No - Jini requires Java, and Java requires an OS (presumably an RTOS for devices). Even if Java chips become popular an OS will be required. Furthermore, Java and Jini are a big threat to WinCE, which means they help VxWorks. Developers have to choose an API which will allow their programs to run as many places as possible. WinCE has a large developer base by virture of programmer's familiar with the Win32 API. Given a choice between WinCE and VxWorks they'll develop for the one they're familiar with. Give them the choice of the Java API, however, and they get a wider choice of development tools and a wider variety of devices to run on (essentially any sufficiently powerful CPU and OS). Can the Linux OS be used in embedded OS? Theoretically, but I wouldn't expect it to be a threat anytime soon, both because it's not designed for diskless environments, it's not designed to be realtime, and no specific embedded tools exist for it (to my knowledge). Besides, roll-your-own RTOS's are declining in popularity, which in some ways is what Linux would be. If people want to use community source I suspect eCOS from Cygnus would be a bigger threat, since it's designed for embedded and might have some specific embedded tools. Could Microsft develop and improved version of CE that could seriously compete with WIND? Perhaps, but for every project which uses WinCE I suspect there will be ten others which don't. I suspect the vast majority of WIND's revenue comes from market segments WinCE is not appropriate for, and even though intelligent appliances get lots of press they will always be a minority of the market relative to truly embedded devices (with no display). Bill