Assessing the real-time properties of Windows CE 3.0

Until now, the Windows CE operating system real-time properties made it suitable at best for soft real-time applications. This was supposed to change with the release of Windows CE version 3.0, codename Cedar. When Microsoft first announced its plans for version 3.0, they promised to implement a whole new level of real-time capabilities, which should allow Windows CE to be used in many hard real-time applications. Approximately one year after the first beta version of CE 3.0 was made available, Microsoft finally released CE 3.0 in mid-2000. This paper describes the effort of the United Technology Research Center (UTRC), to assess the real-time properties of Windows CE 3.0. The work is aimed at determining if Windows CE 3.0 is capable of supporting the execution of time critical embedded computing applications. The preliminary results of this assessment are presented.