earlier this year.
(Click here for larger view of the Windows Embedded roadmap)Hall lists the following key enhancements that are implemented in the 6.0 release:
- Operating System architecture:
- CE 6.0 now supports up to 32k processes with 2 GB virtual memory per process. CE 5.0 supported a maximum of 32 processes with 32 MB Virtual Memory per process.
- Operating system processes are moved to kernel space. GWES, Device driver manager, file system manager are all in kernel space for improved performance.
- New Kernel mode and user mode driver model. CE 5.0 only supported user mode drivers. Kernel mode drivers offer performance, user mode drivers provide stability. There can be multiple instances of the user mode driver manager
- Strict partitioning of user mode and kernel mode.
- Tools:
- The CE 6.0 development tools are integrated with Visual Studio 2005 providing one tool to configure, build, download, debug, and test the operating system and the same tool to write native (Win32, MFC, ATL, WTL, STL) or managed (C#/VB) applications.
- Technologies
- More information on supported operating system technologies will be made available at launch.
Microsoft
demonstrated Windows CE 6 at the MEDC 2006 (Mobile & Embedded Developer's Conference) held in Las Vegas last May, and MEDC attendees received free CDs containing a preview beta of the new OS version.
The Windows Embedded Roadmap that appeared in a presentation during MEDC (shown above) indicates production shipment of "Windows CE 6" commencing during the second half of 2006, followed by a "Windows CE Feature Pack" release roughly a year later. Also noteworthy, is the indicated availability of "Windows Vista with Embedded Restrictions," scheduled for some time next year.
The exact launch date for Windows CE 6.0 shipments has yet to be announced.
"Stay tuned," says Hall.
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