In an attempt to capitalize on the huge opportunity in the embedded systems market, and the dominance of the Java programming platform, Oracle has unwrapped a new set of offerings facilitating the design of applications across a wide range of embedded systems. These systems include network appliances, healthcare devices, home gateways and routers, and large multifunction printers.
The company unveiled a pair of offerings as part of its embedded systems push: Oracle Java Embedded Suite 7.0, which aims to speed development of embedded systems; and Oracle Java Micro Edition (ME) Embedded 3.2, a run-time version geared for microcontrollers with less than a megabyte of memory, and as little as 130K bytes of RAM and 350K bytes of ROM.
Oracle Java ME Embedded provides a commercial, binary implementation of Java for small-footprint devices, based on ARM v5, ARM v6, and ARM v7 design chipsets. (Source: Oracle)
Citing stats such as 1 billion Java downloads annually, and the fact that more than 3 billion devices are powered by Java technology, Oracle officials said the market is ripe for more powerful development tools built on the programming language, and optimized for the design of embedded systems applications. Especially, they claim, in light of the growing interest in creating machine-to-machine applications (M2M), or what's being called the "Internet of Things."
"M2M is touted as the next big wave of technical innovation," Peter Utzschneider, Oracle's vice president of product management, told us. He said Java is the perfect programming solution to propel this trend, given the huge numbers of entrenched developers, and the fact that Java code is transportable between an array of devices.
In fact, Utzschneider said traditional methods of writing native code for embedded systems applications don't lend themselves to the new world of M2M, where applications need to be continually refreshed. "Devices have tended not to get smarter over time, or get new features rolled out because that hasn't been the nature of the business," he said. "But with the Internet of Things coming, that means devices have to be connected and intelligent enough to do things that we're asking them to do, or report back on what they've done. The way people have developed (applications) in a proprietary, isolated fashion no longer works."
To address the new demands of the emerging market, Oracle Java Embedded Suite 7.0 bundles a Web server, Web services, and database technologies, along with an applications framework, into a standards-based solution optimized for embedded devices. Specifically, the bundle is based on the Oracle Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE) Embedded 7, Java DB, versions of GlassFish for Embedded Suite, and the Jersey Web Services Framework (optimized for a reduced footprint).
Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 is designed and optimized to meet the unique requirements of small, embedded, low-power devices like microcontrollers, sensors, and other resource-constrained hardware without screens or user interfaces. With support for on-the-fly application downloads and updates, remote operation in challenging environments, and the ability to add new capabilities without impacting existing functions, Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 brings a commercial implementation of the programming language for small-footprint devices based on the ARM architecture, including Cortex-M and Cortex-A.
Target applications include wireless modules for M2M, industrial and building control, smart grid infrastructure, home automation, and environmental sensors.
Beth, this is interesting in that this is the environment Java was orginally meant for. By virtue of running on a virtual machine (the JVM) it could be written once and run anywhere a JVM was available. This made it usefull in web browsers, but it was not the original intent.
Big news here, Beth. I think Oracle is really onto something. As you point out, its targeted at MCUs with less than 130K bytes of RAM and 350K bytes of ROM, which suggests they're going at the small end of the embedded market. Sounds like thy think the Internet of Things is coming.
They were totally all over the Internet of things or M2M applications as the genesis of this announcement. While there is some new technology here as far as the small-sized embedded tools for microprocessors, a lot of the other piece of the announcement involved a lot of repackaging to give developers a soup-to-nuts embedded development platform built around Java.
Having done Embedded Systems Development for a number of years, as well as have done some Java applications development, I'll say "No thank you!" to having Java on an embedded level....
It would take some really tough convincing for me to consider running Java on an embedded system that would require any type of responsiveness. I suppose it would be better with this new ME platform and development suite, but with the alternatives out there, it would take some convincing for me to try it.
Maybe if you had a bunch of Java developers and wanted to start a new embedded product, it might make sense, but I tend to stay away from all things Oracle if I can!
I'm a Java guy, writing servers and desktop/web interfaces. Last year I tinkered with a Texas Instrument MSP430 set for a potential home-grown project. I found the programming language to be too "close to the silicon" (almost like assembly code), not well documented with few examples (at least from the perspective of a beginner), and the available IDEs were neither free nor very modern. (An IDE is the Integrated Development Environment... a fancy text editor for writing the code.) In the end, I gave up on the project because I didn't have the time to learn everything by trial and error. What I did manage to learn hinted that there were many gotchas to learn, and probably very different gotchas for each chip set. And there was no cohesion between the chip documentation, programming language documentation, and IDE documentation. Everything was an island.
Java has several great IDEs to choose from, with vast documentation, templates, and examples. And the Java language itself is obviously well documented. In the Java world, there seem to be APIs, tutorials, and examples for nearly anything you can imagine. And maybe more importantly there are resources for people starting from scratch.
I felt that programming the MSP430 was somewhat an "insider's" game. Without past on-the-job experience/mentoring, it would be a steep learning curve.
If Java can put a familiar blanket on the whole thing, then maybe it can ease more developers into the field.
Regarding Jim_E's worries, all I can say is that good Java code work well. Sure, if you make some newbie mistakes, Java performance will kick you, but beyond that hump in the learning curve, it's pretty good stuff. It's certainly mature enough to put some trust into, despite recent bad press for newfound security holes... they are just temporary bumps, and don't have anything to do with embedded systems anyway.
@Janicki: Thanks so much for the great perspective on working with Java and your input on the IDE issue and what Java tools have to offer. I think your point about Java being a known entity is definitely the lever that Oracle is trying to pull to get into this market.
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