Little-known Canadian call-processing software company Isotel Research in Calgary, Alberta, says it’s been approached by Hewlett-Packard Co, which is seeking to license the 50Kb embedded Java virtual machine it’s been peddling without any commotion for sometime now. At ten times the size, the HP embedded JVM, which caused such a furore during Sun’s JavaOne showcase last week, certainly isn’t destined for the wireless market, Isotel observes. HP’s robotic demo was fully-wired. Ironically, Isotel’s first port was to HP’s tiny palmtop computer. It didn’t say whether it will license its work to HP, but it claims to have two major cell phone makers in the bag, one of which failed to go public with its plans last week as Isotel had hoped. It’s already licensed the work to two base station vendors. In cell phones the software will be used on conventional embedded processors – not Java chips – to run address book and calendar applications plus games; it had Tetris running on the JVM we saw. It expects the communications giants will quickly develop products which combine a cell phone, Palm Pilot-type personal organizer and handheld gaming device. Isotel, which said it might even have put together a press release to trumpet its embedded virtual machine if it had realized what publicity it could have generated, said it was too early to say whether it will implement Sun Microsystems Inc’s Embedded Java 1.0 specification, describing the work as very loose. Isotel has 30 staff, only two of them doing Java work. It also has small footprint Java components for consumer product developers.
