Embedded software company signs an agreement with JavaSoft
Under an agreement between Wind River Systems and Sun’s JavaSoft, Wind River will make available JavaOS technology for its Tornado development environment and VxWorks operating system to developers of embedded systems and products.
The agreement between JavaSoft and Wind River was signed prior to the recent Embedded Systems Conference held in San Jose, CA, from September 16 to 19. “We were the first to say we are going to have the JavaOs,” said Stephanie Schwarz, manager of public affairs at Wind River. She pointed out that the JavaOS is geared toward the embedded world: “Current Java technology has the AWT [abstract windowing toolkit], which is too big to be effective in embedded applications. The JavaOS will have a different windowing class that will be much more specific to embedded.”
Schwarz detailed some of the terms of the agreement. “Essentially, we will use everything that the JavaOS has except the kernel; the kernel will be the VxWorks kernel,” said Schwarz. With VxWorks, customers will benefit by having access to the many tools it supports — like the Tornado tools environment. This tool support currently is lacking with the JavaOS.
Referring to a recent story in Electronic Engineering Times, in which Jim Mitchell, JavaSoft’s vice president of technology and architectures, stated that real growth in the embedded arena will take four or five years, Schwarz made note of the many requests for Java support that Wind River has already received. “Embedded will take off in the next year and a half,” she said, underscoring the fact that changes in the embedded world are just around the corner.
While the integration with the JavaOS will have to wait until JavaSoft makes the JavaOS available, for developers who wish to start development right away, Wind River has already integrated Java technology with Tornado.
The current Tornado for Java includes the following features:
- Runs Java applications and applets in embedded systems
- Turnkey binary for rapid startup
- Full Java functionality
- Full VxWorks compatibility
- Executes standard Java bytecodes on VxWorks
- Provides complete VxWorks control over Java threads
- Uses Tornado development environment
- Instruments Java for use with WindView system visualizer
- Allows VxWorks tasks and Java threads to interoperate, synchronize, and communicate
- HotJava and Appletviewer available
- Available for numerous CPU architectures
- ROM-able
- Includes graphics and windowing
Tornado is a development and execution environment for embedded and real-time applications and comes with a suite of cross-development tools and utilities. It includes VxWorks, a scalable, real-time operating system. Tornado also includes a range of communications software options, such as Ethernet, serial line, and in-circuit or ROM emulator.
