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The rise of real-time Java

Guy Kewney AnchorDesk

Published: 20 Jul 2001 17:05 BST

Time to wake up, and realise that the smell we all thought was the whiff of burning toast, is actually the smell of fresh-roast Java coffee.

Here's a little list of intelligent phones; and for a trick question, I want you to divide them into two columns; Symbian (EPOC) or Windows:

DoCoMoP530i
Motorola i85s
Nokia Communicator 9210
LG iBook
Samsung SCH-X130
Siemens SX45

Here's a clue about why it's a trick question: go to http://www.javamobiles.com/ and you'll get a pretty complete list from which those are just a selection. And the answer is: the OS isn't the point. The point is that all these phones, whether EPOC or Windows, use Java.

Now you can read what you like into this, but the fact is that there is a bottom line: a lot of people are going to be writing their software for both mobile phones and for PDAs, in Java. And they'll rely on the Java Virtual Machine to translate this into operating system calls to EPOC or to Windows.

So: head over here and re-read the story about the joint venture between Sun and ARM -- Sun, which owns Java, and ARM, which makes the processor inside an awful lot of phones, and quite a few PDAs -- and ask yourself: what happens if the phone makers go for a Java-based machine instead?

It's not impossible. A phone is an excellent example of a real-time ("isochronous") system. And one of the noticeable trends in real-time programming these days, is the rise of real-time Java.

Neither Sun nor ARM was making any wild promises or predictions, just: "The agreement will allow the two companies to align their respective Java technology roadmaps and collaborate on new Java technology, targeted specifically at embedded applications commonly found in wireless or mobile devices," which, for me, is big news.

It doesn't mean that people are going to throw away either EPOC or Windows. On the other hand, it does mean that the one objection to Java itself -- that it can be slow -- is going to fade away. And so, if EPOC or Windows turns out to be flawed in some way, they don't have to throw away all the work they're doing if they do it for Java in the first place.

The technology which has attracted Sun here, is Java optimisation technology, Jazelle, which substantially increases the speed of Java code on an ARM processor. It's worth watching to see how this develops over the coming months.

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