And as for hardware acceleration ...

And as for hardware acceleration ...

Posted Nov 15, 2006 1:23 UTC (Wed) by HalfMoon (guest, #3211)
In reply to: Sun releases Java under GPLv2 by tao
Parent article: Sun releases Java under GPLv2

Now if only ARM could be convinced to release the documentation for Jazelle....

Especially considering the main target platform for the "phoneME" package is the Perseus2 ("P2") board with an OMAP 730. That's an ARM926ejs based CPU, which includes that Java acceleration! (So does the OMAP 1711 in the Nokia770, but that's not a development board.)

I'd like to know the truth here, since when I've asked ARM folk (at tradeshows) why Jazelle docs aren't publicly available, they have consistently said that Sun's licensing is to blame.

But there IS an alternative. Atmel's AVR32 has a Java accelerator along the same lines as Jazelle ... and just a couple weeks ago they finally released documentation on the Java support. (I did notice one missing section re threading though...) So if you can cope with the fact that AVR32 is nowhere near as mature as ARM, you can at least build systems that run Linux (2.6.19 includes basic AVR32 support), DSP-ish functionality, and hardware-accelerated Java ... on a much more accessible development platform (buy at digikey.com).

I wonder how long it will take before the J2ME on AVR32 includes that hardware acceleration...

---

(Log in to post comments)