The next raft of licensees of Sun Microsystems Inc’s Sun Microelectronics’ Java chips have popped their heads above the parapet, following Northern Telecom Ltd’s declaration last week (CI No 2,919). Sun has decided to keep the microJava and UltraJava chips to itself for the time being, but the picoJava core on which they are built looks like ending up in anything from toasters to aircraft, and other semiconductor companies plan to produce Java chips to rival Sun’s offerings. Sun is licensing the picoJava core to chip makers LG Semicon Co Ltd, Mitsubishi Electronics America Inc, NEC Corp and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, and also to Rockwell International Corp and Xerox Corp. Raj Parekh, vice president and chief technology officer said there are no plans to license microJava or UltraJava at present. The company’s aim is to get as many Java chips with picoJava cores out there as possible, added Chet Silvestri, president of Sun Microelectronics. It is noteworthy that none of the four is a Sparc licensee and fabricator, but This is the first wave, there will be more companies, Silvestri told Reuters. Further announcements are expected in the coming weeks. All four semiconductor companies will take the picoJava core and use it to make rivals to Sun’s up-coming microJava and UltraJava offerings both for internal use and to sell on. It is not clear yet whether Sun can license those chips back itself. Samsung expects to have what it calls a value-added device with the necessary on-board functions for use in PDAs and Internet terminals ready in the first half of 1997, but there was nobody available at Samsung to explain further. Samsung will also embed the core in its consumer electronics products, computers, semiconductors, cellular phones and much, much more. Mitsubishi already has a Java-on-silicon chip with its M32R/D with integrated DRAM and SRAM built around the company’s own RISC core. Stephen Hester, vice president of systems marketing at Mitsubishi Electronics said a chip similar to the M32R/D, but with a picoJava core would be a very interesting product. Rockwell’s Collins Commercial Avionics division said its AAMP processors have a very similar instruction set to Sun’s implementation of the Java Virtual Machine in the picoJava core, and it has used those in embedded applications from global positioning systems to avionics, so we can expect similar things with the Java chips it develops. There was no word from Sun Microsystems Computer Co on when it will be using Java chips in its so- called JavaStations (CI No 2,875). Silvestri suggested Sun Microelectronics was ready when the Java stations were. It’s really up to them now, he said.
