Hewlett-Packard Co said it was expanding the scope of its Chai product line way beyond that of an alternative Java virtual machine at the Embedded Systems show in San Jose this week, with the introduction of a new platform aimed at device manufacturers. HP also introduced the latest release, version 4.0, of the core Chai VM.
The Chai Appliance Platform is an integrated set of software products aimed at next-generation memory-constrained intelligent appliances. It’s intended to help device manufacturers get to market quicker. Made up of software building blocks that can be inserted as required, the platform includes previously released embedded systems products from HP, such as the Chai VM, Server, FreezeDry compression tool, AWT windowing toolkit, ChaiAppliance Plug and Play and TurboChai ahead-of-time compiler. There are also three new components: Chai/e-speak, adding e-services support through HP’s E-Speak; Chai/OpenView, supporting management of devices by HP’s OpenView systems management tool; and ChaiFarer, an embedded XML web browser, designed for easy customization by device manufacturers.
HP says the combination of E-speak will enable appliances to offer uses instant access to personalized e-services, and could offer new revenue opportunities for appliance makers, based on E-Speak services. It’s taken the client API libraries within E-Speak, which are written in Java, and streamlined them to fit inside Chai, where they can take advantage of the TurboChai compiler and FreezeDry compression. This enables E-Speak implementations in devices such as cell phones and personal digital assistants. For OpenView management, HP has embedded the OpenView Network Node Manager into Chai, preparing for a time when devices connected to the net will outnumber traditional computers.
Version 4.0 of the ChaiVM, which comes less than four months after the release of version 3.0 in June (CI No 3,682), offers better scalability and faster real-time performance, according to HP. There are new class libraries, including beans, text, SQL, security and math libraries, and new hard real-time performance improvements that enable real-time Java applications to execute with deterministic response times of less than 125 microseconds (up from 200 microseconds back in June). ChaiAWT and TurboChai have also been updated. The footprint remains at around 250Kb
Also at the Embedded Systems show, Insignia Software Inc announced that its Jeode clean room Java virtual machine has now been integrated with the CodeWarrier IDE from Metrowerks Corp. CodeWarrier includes all the foundation components for Java applications development, including project manager, editor, class browser, compiler, debugger and RAD tools. Insignia has also licensed Jeode on to Quantum Software Corp for use in future network attached storage systems.
