Windows CE 6.0 continues to evolve and innovate the Windows CE base into a more robust and scalable embedded operating system. Designed to be the complimentary release to Windows Vista, CE 6.0 delivers significant low level changes to the Windows CE formula, substantially booting the capabilities of the embedded format and opening up significant avenues of future market growth for Windows Embedded and Microsoft partners .
Windows CE 6.0 was originally slated for release in the second quarter of 2005, under the convention of the whisky inspired codename of Cardhu. The release cycle of Windows CE 5.0 itself slipped considerably as resources were diverted into the Windows Mobile 5.0 release and other Windows Embedded projects and in late 2005 the Cardhu programme was cancelled in favour of a new initiative for the release under the project group name of Yamazaki.
Yamazaki was scheduled for release during the second half of 2006 and delivered on time with an Release To Manufacturing date of the 15th September 2006. The primary focus of the release is without a doubt the extension of the capabilities of Windows CE's kernel. With CE 6.0 Microsoft are removing some of the most restrictive limitations of the platform, limitations that have been a constant throughout all of the previous incarnations of CE.
The most significant low level change is in the kernel addressing and resource allocation. In previous releases the kernel has been limited to the Windows CE 32/32 limit, that is, 32 processes with each process being limited to addressing 32MB of Virtual Memory (VM). Under Windows CE 6.0, this limit has been removed and as part of a next generation kernel initiative which has seen changes in the process, addressing, driver and application interaction enabling the macro kernel increased support for up to 32,000 unique or virtual processes with a potential upper limit of 2GB of Virtual Memory per process. This in addition to the already established 2GB upper limit of Kernel addressable memory from Windows CE 5.0.
Microsoft Embedded's philosophy for the release has been to concentrate on boasting the predominantly low level changes with which they will attempt to see the next generation of Windows CE to the consumer, as below
- Feature parity with Windows CE 5.0 (and more)
- Updated development tools
- Next-generation kernel
- Backward compatibility
- Enhanced robustness and security
- User-mode driver model
- Enhanced wireless networking support
- Networked media device features
- No regressions on performance and size
In addition to these low level changes, the beta release of Yamazaki, unveiled for the first time on 9th May at the 2006 Mobile Developers Conference MEDC contains significant functional improvements, far beyond the sparse user layer applications added by its predecessor.
Firstly, Windows CE 6 continues to focus its attentions on the ARM architecture, with new BSP and compiler support for the next generation of ARM series or ARM6 processors. Windows CE 6.0 will be the first Microsoft operating system to support Microsoft's 21st Century extensions to the dates File Allocation Table (FAT) file system in the form of the little discussed ExFAT While full details of ExFAT have yet to be revealed, it is known that the file system is aimed - at least from Windows CE's point of view - at catering for external storage medium's which compliment the Windows CE Object Store as external storage, such as Solid State CF and SD cards. The ExFAT addressing system will be optimised for embedded device use and crucially remove the 32GB volume limitation imposed artificially upon the FAT specification by Microsoft themselves. Additionally, in the age of digital multimedia, ExFAT will see away with the 2GB file size limit for which in the Windows world NTFS is currently required to remedie, a fact which Microsoft are pinning hopes of increased adoption of Windows Automotive for the Windows CE 6.0 run.
In a similar fashion to Windows XP's NTFS counterpart, file system enhancements to CE6 will allow OEM's to implement file system encryption at the file level or at the volume level, improving future mobile device security, particularly for enterprises on the device as well as in the digital communications realm. Microsoft have also set the groundwork for user permission support in Windows CE's object store. A permissions feature will not be included in Windows CE's Platform Builder at the time of release, however the foundations for support have already been added and will be include as a feature pack for Windows CE 6.0, or in the next release. It is not currently known whether ExFAT will be capable of supporting a permissions based file access schema.
Windows CE 6.0 continues t