Development Computer Requirements

To support Compact 2013 development, the development computer must have one of the following operating system installed:

·         Windows 7 (x86-based or x64-based version)

·         Windows 8 (x86-based or x64-based version)

·         Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64-based)

·         Windows Server 2012 (x64-based)

In addition to meeting the processor, memory and storage requirements to install the above operating system, the development computer must meet the following hardware requirements:

·         2.4 GHz processor with 2 GB or more RAM

·         100 GB or more available hard disk space, formatted using NTFS file system

·         Microsoft DirectX-9 capable video card running at 1024 x 768 or higher display resolution

Although the 100 GB hard disk space requirement seems to be extraordinary large, it’s actually needed.  The full installation for the initial Compact 2013 software occupies over 25 GB of storage.  A single OS design project (to develop custom OS run-time image) that compiled in all of the three development modes, Release, Checked and Debug, can occupy more than 8 GB of storage.  To anticipate the additional storage needed to install future updates (which may require additional storage to store old files), support OS design projects, installing additional board support packages, OS components, utility and updates, 100 GB of storage is actually fairly conservative.

The Compact 2013 development tool is designed to take advantage of multi-core processor, when it’s available, and will spawn multiple compilation tasks in parallel to shorten project compilation time.  In many cases, the additional investment to acquire a higher performance development computer with faster multi-core processor, more system memory (RAM) and faster hard drive to support Windows Embedded Compact development can be recovered from the gained efficient which help save development time from just one project.