Microsoft Everywhere

[Jim Kring]

I just read an article on DeviceForge.com called .NET dives deeper into gadgets, which discusses the .Net Embedded platform for targeting "bare metal" (no OS). This is pretty interesting since NI has shown at NI Week that LabVIEW is being targeted at smaller and smaller embedded devices and architectures, including those without an OS, such as the FPGA platform. Since Microsoft (or at least one of its partners) is moving in this direction, it seems possible that Microsoft and National Instruments might start competing head-to-head in this arena. In the desktop and server world, the OS and developer tools are tightly coupled. In the embedded hardware world the embedded hardware and developer tools could also be tightly coupled. Maybe MS will try to extend its monopoly into the embedded world, too.

Just food for thought.

[Irene_he]

That sounds a very good and interesting news. A year ago I was thinking of Wince.net (runtime OS only few dollars) for some consumer devices, but it still needs OS.

I wish I can invent something that every panda will own one (the 1.3 billionth panda was just arrived a few days ago)

------------again, this is just one of my day dream in the cafe pub.

[Mike Ashe]

Another opportunity for a new test niche.

[connecting the dots]

Since Gates announced SPOT a coup0le of years ago, and the core is based on a subset of .NET, and LabVIEW comes with .NET access, and NI is going smaller and smaller, I wonder how long before the announcement comes from NI of a new Toolkit or addition to the FPGA tools that will target the SPOT framework?

[/connecting the dots]