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Author Topic: Montavista Hard Real-time Breakthrough  (Read 1812 times)

speculatrix

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Montavista Hard Real-time Breakthrough
« on: August 08, 2005, 10:58:14 am »
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kopsis

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Montavista Hard Real-time Breakthrough
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2005, 12:11:07 pm »
The author of that article doesn't appear to have even the slightest clue what he's talking about. Much of it doesn't even make any sense and the few parts that are comprehensible don't really tell you anything.
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speculatrix

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Montavista Hard Real-time Breakthrough
« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2005, 06:11:10 am »
I must admit, I only skimmed the article before posting the link. Having re-read the article, I agree, it's very thin on useful content, and doesn't give any insight into what MV actually have done.

The article seems to be a slight rehash of MV's own announcement here:
http://www.mvista.com/news/2005/realtime.html

Changing the subject slightly, I read a long time ago how WinCE came about. Many people think they started with the Windows source code and stripped it down to make a new OS. In actual fact, they started from scratch, used the smallest subset of the Windows API that they could and still be useful, and only added new parts of WinAPI when people could persuade them. Unfortunately, this just led to more and more bloat in the full pocketPC version.. but apparently the minimal base WinCE OS and library is actually quite good (according to friends of mine who've been hardcore WinCE developers).

It's interesting to contrast this with the embedded linux projects which try and strip linux kernel down to make it lighter and leaner. Or with PalmOS which didn't have any legacy to support, but increasingly struggles to keep up with the highly directed monoculture of WinCE/PocketPC software and hardware.
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kopsis

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Montavista Hard Real-time Breakthrough
« Reply #3 on: August 09, 2005, 11:33:41 pm »
Quote
but apparently the minimal base WinCE OS and library is actually quite good (according to friends of mine who've been hardcore WinCE developers).
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I guess that depends on one's frame of reference. My experience with WinCE is that it's not inherently bad, but I've never found an embedded application where it's really a good fit. For systems that need hard real-time and/or serious reliablity it can't hold a candle to a true RTOS like VxWorks. For really small/cheap devices it's too expensive. As a general purpose embedded OS, it works but feels pretty crippled compared to embedded Linux. In my experience, the folks who champion WinCE are often folks who dealt with the horrors of embeded MS-DOS so for them WinCE is truly a blessing
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