Spec for real-time Java inches closer

by Ashlee Vance

April 12, 2001 —

Sun Microsystems Inc. is working with industry partners to develop a preliminary
specification for real-time Java that it hopes to deliver by the end of this month,
James Gosling, a Sun fellow and chief scientist, said Wednesday in a speech at
the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco.

The preliminary specification will be submitted to an expert group helping
oversee the development of the technology, and Sun's goal is to release a final
version by the end of this year, said Greg Bollella, senior staff engineer at
Sun, who joined Gosling on stage and is one of the lead developers of real-time
Java.

The final specification will provide developers with a common technology base
for building real-time applications that use Java. Sun and its industry partners
will provide tool kits and other developer aids to help make it simple to add
real-time functions to existing applications that use Sun's technology, Sun
officials said.

Embedded systems is a broad term that refers to low-level computing capabilities
that are typically hidden from end users, such as the control systems in airplanes,
automobiles, traffic signals, many types of industrial equipment and household
appliances such as microwave ovens.

Real-time communications are essential in embedded systems where information
must be transferred instantaneously. For example, a pilot's instruments need
to deliver up-to-the-second information about an aircraft's mechanical status.

Sun announced its plans to work on a real-time Java specification in early
1999 and has teamed with IBM Corp. and others to work on the real-time Java
project. IBM retains a significant role in the development of the spec, since
Bollella began his research on the project while working for Big Blue.

With Java's fabled "write once and run anywhere" capabilities, the
Sun officials see real-time Java as a way to join all parts of a computing infrastructure,
from servers all the way down to instrument control panels and television set-top
boxes.

In the long term, the real-time technology could be used to simplify the way
in which people interact with machines, the Sun officials said. Instead of seeing
an airplane cockpit full of buttons, lights and levers, pilots might eventually
work with a "glass cockpit" in which mechanical instruments become
digital displays.

"Computers are just becoming so much a part of everything that happens
around us," Gosling said.

IDG News Service