Cell phone makers rally around Java
By Rick Merritt, EE Times
June 18, 2003 (4:32 p.m. EST)
URL: eetimes.com
SAN FRANCISCO — Top cell phone makers are converging on a more common implementation of Java in handsets. An emerging standard software profile, powered by first-ever hardware acceleration using ARM Ltd.'s Jazelle instruction-set extensions, is fast marching to market, said several OEMs at the JavaOne conference last week.
The new software profile won't end the fragmentation from a host of vendor-specific Java implementations, but it should cut through the confusion that has plagued developers for the last 18 months. Meanwhile, the outlook for standalone Java acceleration chips appears grim, although two chip startups-Nazomi Communications and Ajile Systems-claim to have netted their first design wins.
There's little doubt Java has become the default application environment for next-generation phones. About 94 million Java phones from 22 OEMs have shipped to date, said Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice president of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s software group. "We will outstrip the PC industry. We have volume coming out of our ears," Schwartz said.
But to date those phones have been plagued by incompatible implementations. "There are some 170 makes of [Java] handsets but every one has to be modeled differently because media acts differently on each one," said a manager from one company that distributes Java ring tones.....
Jazelle poised to leap
Representatives from Motorola, Nokia and Siemens said they have not implemented any hardware acceleration for Java to date, but all three expect to, using the Jazelle technology embedded into ARM cores. Motorola's semiconductor group "is building Java acceleration into the next-generation applications processors" that the company's cell phone unit expects to adopt, said Mala Chandra, director of client applications and architecture for Motorola's cell phone group. Schultze said he expects versions of the ARM 926EJ will provide the first Java acceleration for Siemens' phones.....
"The market for Java processors doesn't seem to have panned out," said Sun's Lindholm. Startups "can't get critical mass, especially with the ARMs, Hitachis and Intels out there" supporting Java on general-purpose processors, he added.
'We have volume coming out of our ears,' Sun's Schwartz reports.
Sun is beginning to consider Java performance on the cell phone solved as it turns its attention to tuning class libraries and graphics stacks for performance. "It's a systems optimization issue," Lindholm said. At JavaOne, Sun and ARM presented work on a Dynamic Adaptive Compiler for Java that could ship in June and a Java optimization software layer, called JTEK, from ARM that will ship by year's end.
The Jazelle extensions are now available in ARM 9, 10 and 11 cores, said Steve Steele, Java program manager for ARM. "Jazelle is going to be in a good proportion of next-generation handsets," he added. |
