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OVERVIEW OF MICROSOFT WINDOWS CE

Microsoft Windows CE is a compact, highly efficient and scalable operating system that is being used in a wide variety of embedded products, from handheld PCs to specialized industrial controllers and consumer electronic devices. The Microsoft Windows CE operating system has proven itself capable of handling the most demanding 32- bit embedded applications. Equally important, Windows CE brings the full power of the Microsoft 32- bit Windows- based development tools to the embedded systems designer.

One of the primary reasons to choose Windows CE for embedded applications is the widely used Microsoft Win32 application programming interface (API). The Win32 API is at the core of nearly every 32- bit application being written for Windows today, from high- end server products running on the Microsoft Windows NT operating system to the smallest desktop and embedded applications. To be flexible enough to meet the needs of a wide range of products, Windows CE is modular it can be custom- built for a product by selecting from a set of available software modules. In addition, some of the modules can be custom- built by selecting a set of available components for that module.

Windows CE enables you to design embedded system platforms using a minimum set of software modules and components needed to support the platform's system requirements (for example, minimizing the memory footprint and performance times of the operating system). Using componentization, you can, for example, build a Windows CE embedded operating system that contains the kernel and a selected set of communications but does not provide a graphical user interface.

Windows CE offers subsets of the same programming interfaces used to develop applications for Microsoft Windows 95/98 and Microsoft Windows NT operating systems. Windows CE supports a subset of the Microsoft Win32 application programming interface (API). This means that Windows CE system developers can readily use many of the wide variety of tools, third- party books, and training courses that are available to Win32 developers. Windows CE modules and components provide the following features:

OAL - OEM Abstraction Layer: The OEM abstraction layer is a hardware abstraction layer. This thin layer of code provides the interface between the Windows CE kernel and the device hardware. The OEM receives a version of the kernel tailored for a specific microprocessor and implements hardware- specific code for power management, interval timer, real- time clock, and interrupt handling functions.

GDI - Graphics Device Interface: The Windows CE GDI components supports bit- depth independence and a new palette model in which the foreground application controls the system palette. These components allow blitting between 1, 4, 8, 16, 24, and 32- bit per pixel (bpp) Windows format bitmaps. They support fully scalable and rotatable TrueType fonts, improved printing functionality, and additional controls. Windows CE 2.x also adds full support for all standard raster operation (ROP) codes, increasing the bitmap manipulation capabilities.

Microsoft Windows CE includes a TCP/IP stack and other communication features. Windows CE can be the O/S for embedded network devices. Windows CE for Embedded Networking. Tutorial Download - PDF File, 123.270 bytes.

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