I am speaking from decade-old statements of intent and hearsay which while more recent is not necessarily as well-informed, rather than from actual knowledge of implementation details, but my recollection is that MS was going to leverage the HAL concept for these implementations, so you'd have the hardware-specific drivers (which have to be different anyway) expose a uniform interface to the OS, so yes, the OS could be portable across different devices.
I do know that Windows Embedded accomplishes this goal, because it's possible to build a full-on XP system from Embedded components. Effectively, the Embedded system _is_ XP, but with different licensing rules that allow the Embedded OEM to omit features and components of Windows that MS legally requires standard Windows OEMs to include, like the UI and the security subsystem blah blah blah.
WinCE, last I knew anything about implementation details, does not share much code with the NT codebase. It is in my brain that I have *heard* that in recent years this gap is closing, and that WinCE systems are being built from Embedded components, but I don't *know*.
The Xbox platforms are somewhere between WinCE and Windows Embedded, but I have no idea where on the spectrum each falls.
I know people in Windows and in Games who could probably provide more definitive answers, but I'm not allowed to ask them this kind of question. (I'm probably not allowed to answer this kind of question either, but as I mentioned, all my knowledge comes from before I took this job and my MS NDA/noncompete expired years ago, so it's probably safe, in the sense that it's probably wrong or irrelevant by now. :) )
So that's the long answer. The short answer is that, last I heard, they were driving toward that goal.
Personal opinion? As long as they feel they have to support backwards compatibility with long-dead hardware and applications, they'll never get there. 'Course, that's my personal opinion on many of Microsoft's goals.
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Re: Modular operating systems
Date: 2007-01-11 12:02 am (UTC)I do know that Windows Embedded accomplishes this goal, because it's possible to build a full-on XP system from Embedded components. Effectively, the Embedded system _is_ XP, but with different licensing rules that allow the Embedded OEM to omit features and components of Windows that MS legally requires standard Windows OEMs to include, like the UI and the security subsystem blah blah blah.
WinCE, last I knew anything about implementation details, does not share much code with the NT codebase. It is in my brain that I have *heard* that in recent years this gap is closing, and that WinCE systems are being built from Embedded components, but I don't *know*.
The Xbox platforms are somewhere between WinCE and Windows Embedded, but I have no idea where on the spectrum each falls.
I know people in Windows and in Games who could probably provide more definitive answers, but I'm not allowed to ask them this kind of question. (I'm probably not allowed to answer this kind of question either, but as I mentioned, all my knowledge comes from before I took this job and my MS NDA/noncompete expired years ago, so it's probably safe, in the sense that it's probably wrong or irrelevant by now. :) )
So that's the long answer. The short answer is that, last I heard, they were driving toward that goal.
Personal opinion? As long as they feel they have to support backwards compatibility with long-dead hardware and applications, they'll never get there. 'Course, that's my personal opinion on many of Microsoft's goals.