Windows CE, do you want to play on multiple cores?

From: http://hezongjian.com/blog? P = 9693

As we all know, the CE kernel is completely re-written, and has nothing to do with 9x nt, which gives CE better real-time and flexibility. Since its birth, Ce kernel has been changed twice. The first time is 3.0, which greatly enhances the real-time performance. The second time is 6.0, removing the 32/32 limitation of memory/application. In this case, it seems to be perfect. Since the 6.0 release, I have always been optimistic that the 6.0 kernel should be able to have at least three more versions. The next update of the kernel will probably be CE 9.0 (MA Yue, monkey ....). But the plan is not as fast as it changes, and the information industry is changing rapidly. Many predictions will prove to be ridiculous. My predictions are no exception (I am sorry to the audience who listened to my speech at Teched in, and I tried to advocate that redundant kernel feature was unnecessary ). In just a few years, if you ask me again whether the new version of Ce needs to change the kernel. I will stick to it and change it. You 'd better change it right away.

In my opinion, there are two areas to be changed: Memory ing and SMP support.

First, memory ing. Since its birth, Ce has mapped two MB virtual addresses at the beginning of 3 GB of the kernel. One has a cache, and the other has no cache. This makes CE's maximum physical memory only 512 MB, and 512 is already the theoretical limit. If it is more, it will not be recognized. 512 this number is an astronomical number in the embedded system, a few years ago. Who knows that with the rapid development of smartphone software (complicated applications) and hardware (memory cabbage prices), it is no big deal to install a MB memory on a mobile phone. If MB of memory is installed on ce, the trouble is not small. This restriction should be changed. It is not difficult, but the downward compatibility will be compromised.

Next, let's talk about SMP. Ce has been targeted at a single CPU since its birth. Even on a PC, multi-core technology has been booming for a long time, but it still fails to impress ce to join the SMP support, generally, a multi-core CPU is not found. The times are different. Arm, the mainstream platform supported by Ce, has been playing with multiple cores in recent years. Arm11 and arm cortex A9 are playing with mpcore. This is amazing. If ce does not play along, after a few years, it may not be visible on mobile devices. * The nix System (iPhone and Android) supports SMP native. Although the real-time performance of * nix systems is not as high as Ce, they support SMP after all and can leverage all the CPU capabilities. Ce, move everything on the desktop windows such as spinlock and CPU affinity. (The implementation of BSP is complicated. Of course, these things must be supported by BSP ).

There are other things to be changed, maybe. For example, for Windows message mechanism, the current wm_lbuttondown and rbuttondown messages are far from suitable for multi touch. Of course, this may not need to be changed. You can change the driver and API. meizu's mobile phone has already been implemented.

The next version of CE will probably be released this year. Will these two points in the new CE be improved? There is no official news yet. Wait and see.

(References, multi-core arm: http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM11MPCoreMultiprocessor.html)

There is no way to limit the size and address of M. The MIPs and sh hardware access the virtual memory address space in this way, so as long as Ce is compatible with these two things in one day, this burden has to be carried on.