Windows Embedded CE 6.0 (codenamed "''Yamazaki''") is the sixth major release of the Microsoft Windows

embedded operating system An embedded operating system is an operating system for embedded computer systems. Embedded operating systems are computer systems designed to increase functionality and reliability for achieving a specific task. Resource efficiency comes at the ...

targeted to enterprise-specific tools such as industrial controllers and consumer electronics devices like

digital cameras A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devices ...

. CE 6.0 features a kernel that supports 32,768 processes, up from the 32-process limit of prior versions. Each process receives 2 GB of virtual address space, up from 32 MB. Windows Embedded CE 6.0 was released on November 1, 2006, and includes partial

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

. The OS currently serves as the basis for the

Zune HD The Zune HD is a portable media player in the Zune product family released on September 15, 2009, by Microsoft. It was a direct competitor with Apple's iPod Touch series of mobile devices. It was initially released in 16 and 32 GB capacities. A ...

portable media player. Windows Mobile 6.5 is based on Windows CE 5.2.

Windows Phone 7 Windows Phone 7 is the first release of the Windows Phone mobile client operating system, released worldwide on October 21, 2010, and in the United States on November 8, 2010. It runs on the Windows CE 6.0 kernel. It received multiple large upda ...

, the first major release of the

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design l ...

operating system, is based on Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3; although Windows Phone 7 is also using Windows Embedded Compact 7 features.

New features

* Some system components (such as

filesystem In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is Computer data storage, stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage me ...

, GWES (graphics, windowing, events server), device driver manager) have been moved to the

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learn ...

space. * The system components which now run in kernel have been converted from

EXE Exe or EXE may refer to: * .exe, a file extension * exe., abbreviation for executive Places * River Exe, in England * Exe Estuary, in England * Exe Island, in Exeter, England Transportation and vehicles * Exe (locomotive), a British locomotive ...

s to DLLs, which get loaded into kernel space. * New

virtual memory In computing, virtual memory, or virtual storage is a memory management technique that provides an "idealized abstraction of the storage resources that are actually available on a given machine" which "creates the illusion to users of a very ...

model. The lower 2 GB is the process VM space and is private per process. The upper 2 GB is the kernel VM space. * New device driver model that supports both

user mode A modern computer operating system usually segregates virtual memory into user space and kernel space. Primarily, this separation serves to provide memory protection and hardware protection from malicious or errant software behaviour. Kernel ...

and

kernel mode In computer science, hierarchical protection domains, often called protection rings, are mechanisms to protect data and functionality from faults (by improving fault tolerance) and malicious behavior (by providing computer security). Compute ...

drivers. * The 32 process limit has been raised to 32,768 processes. * The 32 megabyte virtual memory limit has been raised to the total virtual memory; up to 2 GB of private VM is available per process. * The Platform Builder IDE is integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 as plugin (thus forcing the client to obtain Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 also), allowing one development environment for both platform and application development. * Read-only support for UDF 2.5 filesystem. * Support for Microsoft's

exFAT exFAT (Extensible File Allocation Table) is a file system introduced by Microsoft in 2006 and optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards. exFAT was proprietary until 28 August 2019, when Microsoft published its specificati ...

filesystem. *

802.11i IEEE 802.11i-2004, or 802.11i for short, is an amendment to the original IEEE 802.11, implemented as Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2). The draft standard was ratified on 24 June 2004. This standard specifies security mechanisms for wireless netw ...

(WPA2) and 802.11e (QoS) wireless standards, and multiple radio support. * CE 6.0 is compatible with x86, ARM, SH4 (only up to R2) and MIPS based processor architectures. * New

Cellcore A Radio Interface Layer (RIL) is a layer in an operating system which provides an interface to the hardware's radio and modem on e.g. a mobile phone. Android RIL The Android Open Source Project provides a Radio Interface Layer (RIL) between Andr ...

components to enable devices to easily make data connections and initiate voice calls through cellular networks.

New features in R3

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 was finalized in September 2009 for

OEM An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces non-aftermarket parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. It is a common industry term recognized and used by many professional or ...

s and serves as the base platform for the Zune HD and Windows Phone 7. CE 6.0 R3 includes the following new features and abilities:Development Resources , Windows Embedded CE 6.0
/ref> Note that these features listed here are not all specific to Windows Phone 7 or the Zune HD.

References

* * *

External links

History of Windows CE
by HPC:Factor with screenshots of the various versions
Bor-Ming Hsieh and Sue Loh: 3rd Generation Kernel for Windows CE
— Channel 9 Interview
Juggs Ravalia: Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Device Driver Model
— Channel 9 Interview
Mike Hall's WEBlog
{{Microsoft Windows family Embedded CE 6.0 Embedded operating systems Windows CE MIPS operating systems