Slashdot Mirror
Nvidia Lauds Windows CE Over Android For Smartbooks
ericatcw writes "Google's Android may enjoy the hype, but an increasing number of key industry players say the mobile OS isn't ready for ARM netbooks, aka smartbooks. Nvidia is the most recent to declare Android unfit for duty, stating its preference for Microsoft's Windows CE, which an Nvidia exec praised for having a "low footprint" and being "rock solid." Nvidia is busy optimizing its multimedia-savvy Tegra system-on-chip for Windows CE. Such improvements won't arrive for at least a year to Android, which has an inflexible UI and poor graphics support for devices larger than a smartphone, says Nvidia. Other firms echoing similar criticism include ARM and Asustek."
Optimising hardware for software is not new, especially in the mobile market place. Most ARM cores, for example, have some specialised instructions to make it easier to implement a JVM (including things like bounds-tested array accessors). A lot also have special instructions in their DSPs aimed at making things like MPEG or H.264 decoding (or even encoding) fast. A GPU is basically a CPU specially targeted towards implementing something like OpenGL or Direct3D.
That said, optimising a SoC for an OS is a bit weird. You're meant to optimise for the applications, not the OS. If the OS needs the hardware optimised for it, and does much more than keeping out of the way of the apps (and making sure that the apps keep out of each others' way) then the OS is probably fundamentally broken.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Although Windows Mobile is based on Windows CE, they are not the same thing. Windows Mobile is a specific set of applications on top of Windows CE with a single (visible) application - a PDA or phone. Windows CE itself can be used with a keyboard and mouse and has the ability to act as a standard desktop system (with multiple windows visible, a method to switch between windows, etc.)