SBIR Phase I: Low-power Real-time Java for Mission-critical Systems

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to deliver a low-power real-time Java virtual machine suitable for long-lived deeply embedded applications. The proposed system will leverage research and publicly-available open source software components and deliver a clean-room Java implementation that promises to outperform competing implementations with a dramatically reduced power and memory footprint. Embedded real time software is pervasive - it can be found in automobiles, trains, aircraft, satellites, medical devices, sensor networks, among other prevalent applications. Currently such software is written in low-level languages, which drives up costs and delays deployment. Shifting the programming model of embedded real time software towards Java would: Reduce the cost of developing software by allowing greater code reuse and giving companies access to a larger pool of programmers. If successful, the current effort will provide a new tool for embedded systems development which benefits significantly from the strengths of Java and the wide pool of talented developers that currently use Java.