Sun Microsystems Inc has given its blessing to a small Israeli embedded software company called NSI Com Ltd which has come up with a software co-processor enabling embedded devices to run applications written for Sun’s EmbeddedJava environment alongside non-Java threads. The Java co-processor, called JSCP provides an isolated set of operating system services for Java on the CPU and is supposed to make EmbeddedJava more attractive to device manufacturers by making it easier to host Java and non-Java applications alongside each other. NSI has licensed EmbeddedJava and with Sun will market co-market JSCP to certain industries in particular territories. Sun has also tapped real-time operating system (RTOS) specialist Microware Systems Inc to produce a reference implementation of the slightly fatter PersonalJava specification on top of its OS-9 operating system. PersonalJava was written by Sun in conjunction with Microware, Lucent Technologies and others embedded system partners. EmbeddedJava is a slimmed-down version of Java for embedded controllers and other applications which require either no user interface or just a simple character-based screen, while PersonalJava is meant for mobile phones and other devices with a user interface. Neither can run independently and require an RTOS real-time operating system, such as Microware, to be present underneath. Sun doesn’t currently offer an RTOS of its own but last week Sun’s JavaSoft unit – responsible for both Embedded and Personal Java – signed a raft of companies to implement and sell PersonalJava on top of their system software. Sun’s JavaSoft group says it’s been spending so much time on PersonalJava that it hasn’t the resources to develop EmbeddedJava as fast as it would have liked to and had to cancel its original plan to introduce the environment at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose today. Meantime, the embedded systems group of Sun’s SunSoft unit is to create new real-time system software combining its as-yet unproductized JavaOS with the RTOS technology from its recent Chorus Systemes SA acquisition.
Isolation is important
Neveg Software Industries, has, through its start-up subsidiary, NSI Com Ltd, designed JSCP; a Java co-processor, which through encapsulation techniques, is said to help developers run their existing embedded applications while at the same time taking advantage of Java. JSCP acts as a an additional operating system on the CPU of the embedded device specifically to run Java code and appears to the native RTOS as a single task. But within that task it performs multithreading, program scheduling and communications management, says NSI. The isolation is important, says NSI to ensure the robustness required in embedded applications. NSI says porting complete embedded applications to Java is often not practical or desirable. The existing embedded application runs alongside the JSCP, which contains part of Sun’s Java virtual machine and executes the Java processes only, taking advantage of Java’s networking and remote management capabilities, according to NSI and leaving the rest of the application to run on its existing platform. The company, based in Negev, south Israel would not put a price to JSCP.
