The Microtec division of embedded system software and development shop Mentor Graphics Corp will begin selling Windows CE licenses for embedded applications later this month, warning that anyone who discounts Microsoft Corp’s ability to compete in the embedded space is whistling in the wind. Mentor company should know, it’s been selling an RTOS real-time operating system called VRTX for 17 years. Microtec doesn’t think Microsoft will be very specific about what it plans to add to CE to ‘harden’ it for use in real-time at its developer conference next week (CI No 3,380), and Microsoft agrees, it won’t be. Even a peek at the next cut, CE 2.1, isn’t expected to reveal much more than incremental work such as Universal Serial Bus; the Crypto 1.0 encryption API; FastIR and IP multicast; File Allocation Table; and network printing. It’s clear, Microtec says, that CE does not yet include the high-performance, high-availability features many embedded system suppliers demand. Microsoft will nevertheless discuss how CE can be applied outside its traditional handheld/consumer device market to embedded markets such as factory automation. Microtec doesn’t put CE into the embedded RTOS category which is why it’s happy enough to sell CE alongside VRTX and to sell its development tools to both markets. CE’s strength is in its interface, its interoperability and the resources Microsoft is putting into developing real-time features. Personal Java does not have the graphical richness of CE and no standard look and feel, says Microtec. Personal Java – which many real-time and embedded system vendors have licensed – also requires that the underlying RTOS is very specific graphics functionality built-in and no RTOS is currently fitted with these features, Microtec says. You can build CE applications today but we don’t know anyone who can build them with Java, the company told us. Personal Java maybe more suited to a new class of appliances such as PDAs and web phones, but Microtec believes CE will come to dominate very lucrative traditional embedded markets such as point-of-sale systems. The Microtec Toolkit for Windows CE including the XRAY Debugger and Microtec C, C++ and Java Compilers for Windows CE will be available for PowerPC the third quarter priced at $4,600 or $7,000 when packaged with CE.
