Section: Software

Java In The Small

Participants : Gilles Grimaud [ Contact ] , Kevin Marquet, David Simplot-Ryl.

Initial goal of Java was to allow high level software development on small devices. Eventually it found success and promotion with software deployment on the Web, and more recently as a solution for huge enterprise servers and massive parallel computing. Today small targets are still supported, but with dedicated (Java-like) APIs and VMs. These specific technologies dramatically restrain the context in which Java applications can be deployed.

JITS focuses on these technologies and on enhancements to allow the use of a real Java Runtime Environment and a Java Virtual Machine everywhere by targeting tiny devices such as SmartCards. These devices usually don't use a Virtual Machine layer over an OS, but expect the Virtual Machine to be the OS. This is possible thanks to the JVM features which can be presented as a specific hardware abstraction for most of them.

JITS platform can be found at the URI http://jits.gforge.inria.fr/ .