>You can't reasonably put "Windows" and "real-time" in the same sentence

>without a pretty long list of qualifications and caveats, even for 
>"soft" real-time. This applies to most versions of UNIX as well, though

>many can be set up to do good real-time.

Windows is good enough for "soft" real-time on PC's as compared to other
OS's.  I've built arrays of 100's of PC's crunching data and
communicating through TCP/IP custom messaging(watch out for DCOM). If
you need to convert 20 million lines of airflow-dynamics code that
controls flight instruments from a Unix platform I would leave it in
Unix.  Windows still has the legacy inroads arguments that were fought
through actual implementations solving real-world, real-time problems.
Though to do some "real" real-time, implementing custom circuitry may be
the best bet, for example visual processing in a small robot or a
guidance system on a missile.  For an AI implementation that requires
processing large volumes of News data from the internet, sub-millisecond
electronic real-time is impractical anyway.  But the few KILOFLOPS you
loose by using Windows verses some other OS is more than made up for in
the plethora of technologies built into Windows at the relatively small
price of a few hundred bucks.  And many of these built-in Windows
software technologies are continuously being improved and optimized
through hardware acceleration.  As well these built-in tools will be
valuable in any AI engine especially when the AI needs to interface with
the world.   

Do I sound like a Windows salesman?

>But at the end of the day, use whatever floats your boat.

This is true and many existing companies are running their
operations/products successfully on other OS's.  But if I were building
a new PC-based AI design, just from my experience, I would jump all over
Windows and it's offerings ... as well take a side glance at Lindows :)


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