How to estimate size of Windows CE run-time image

Question

I am developing an application, and need to estimate how much resources (RAM and ROM) it will need to run on a device. I have been looking online, but couldn't find any good tip on how to do this.

The system in question is an industrial system. The application itself will need to have a .NET Compact framework, and following components besides Windows CE Core: SYSGEN_HTTPD (Web Server), SYSGEN_ATL (Active Template Libraries), SYSGEN_SOAPTK_SERVER (SOAP Server), SYSGEN_MSXML_HTTP (XML/HTTP), SYSGEN_CPP_EH_AND_RTTI (Exception Handling and Runtime Type Information).

Tx

Answer 1

There really is not way to estimate this, becasue application behavior and code can have wildly different requirements. Something that does image manipulation is going to likely require more RAM than a simple HMI, but even two graphical apps that do the same thing could be vastly different based on how image algorithms and buffer sizes are set up.

The only way to greally get an idea is to actually run the application and see what the footprint looks like. I would guess that you're going to want a BOM that includes at least 64MB or RAM and 32MB of flash at a bare minimum. Depending on the app, I'd probably ask for 128MB of RAM. Flash would greatly depend on what the app needs to do.

Answer 2

Since you are specifying core OS components and since I assume you can estimate your own application's resources, I assume you ask for an estimation of the OS as a whole.

The simplest way to have an approximation is to build an emulator image (CE6 has an arm one) and it should give you a sense. The difference with the final image will be with the size of the drivers for the actual platform you will use.