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As computing reaches further into all aspects of our lives,
computational power comes embedded in devices only distantly related to
computers in any traditional sense. Typically, an embedded system is any non-personal computer system or
computing device that performs a dedicated function or is designed for
use with a specific embedded software application. Embedded systems
include POS (Point Of Service) terminals, ATMs (Automatic Teller
Machines), industrial controllers, robots, gateways, VoIP (Voice over
Internet Protocol) telephones, set-top boxes, thin clients, advanced
consumer electronics, and handheld devices, such as smart phones, PDAs
(Personal Digital Assistants), and web pads.
The proliferation of devices with massive onboard computational power
has opened up new vistas for computing research. Engineering greater
computational capacity and lower power requirements into ever smaller
form factors is an obvious challenge in itself. But when embedded
systems can easily and continuously communicate with remote systems,
becoming fully networked systems in their own right, the resulting
integrated systems can be much greater than the sum of their parts.
As a leading supplier of 32-bit embedded system operating systems,
Microsoft is keen to see innovations in new functionality and
performance for such devices, and entirely new device categories.
The
Windows Embedded family
of operating systems includes Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded:
- Windows CE is built from the ground up for small-footprint
devices, is a hard real-time system out of the box, and comes with over two million lines of source code that academics can easily license for teaching as well as
for research purposes.
- Windows XP Embedded is a componentized version of the full
Windows XP desktop operating system, allowing you to tailor exactly what parts of Windows you need on an embedded device.
Both Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded are readily available to
academics from
MSDN Academic Alliance (MSDNAA), with extensive documentation, training materials, and research and teaching case studies. The special
Windows Embedded Academic Program (WEMAP) provides a number of additional resources for professors, researchers, and students, including manufacturer-discounted embedded systems hardware through the
Hardware Empowerment Program (HEP).
Looking beyond these current products, we perform a variety of
research in embedded systems technologies and applications at Microsoft
Research. |
