Sun and 3Com agree to embed Java into Palm Pilot

killbill writes "3Com and Sun have agreed to put a Sun Java virtual machine inside the Palm Pilot. Attenders of the JavaOne Developer Conference can purchase a Palm V with the Java VM already installed as of today, and I assume it will be available to the general public as soon as you can tap your "beam" button. "

Comments

White Paper on The New JVM

[mr.Peabody]

Sun has a white paper describing the implementation of the JVM for the Palm system,
codenamed "Spotless" It goes into detail about the design of the system. At the end it include a short description of some stuff they've implemented in Spotless.

http://www.sunlabs.com/technical-reports/1999/ab stract-73.html

Mr. Peabody

I have a Palm V with KJava!

[ciurana]

I was invited to Sun's ConsumerOne event yesterday as a Java software provider. At the end of the event, all the participants were given a Palm V with kJava and the JavaOne event schedule pre-loaded.

Our company develops industrial-strength Java code, and we've been working with all kinds of JVMs, from embedded devices to HP/UX passing through Linux, Solaris, Mac, and (yuk!) all Winblows flavours including CE. We're currently evaluating non-desktop JVMs and we'll probably focus on two: KJava, the one in the Palm V, and Jeode from Insignia.

So far, after having played with the Palm V for only 3 hours, I can say this: kJava rocks! Here are the specifications reported by the Palm V info:

• KJava VM 114 KB
• Java One applet: 24 KB
• Pong 8KB
• Sun 3D demo 10KB
• Other games (7 more): 85KB

Preloaded Java classes:

• java.lang.* (seems to include only those classes currently in use from the lang package; if a program needs additional classes [i.e. java.lang.Boolean] they will be loaded on demand)
• java.io.*
• java.net.*
• com.sun.kjava.Spotlet
• com.sun.kjava.Graphics
• com.sun.kjava.Bitmap
• com.sun.kjava.Database
• com.sun.kjava.Button
• com.sun.kjava.Trigonometric
• com.sun.kjava.ValueSelector
• com.sun.kjava.Caret
• com.sun.kjava.Caret
• com.sun.kjava.CheckBox
• com.sun.kjava.Dialog
• com.sun.kjava.DialogOwner
• com.sun.kjava.HelpDisplay
• com.sun.kjava.IntVector
• com.sun.kjava.List
• com.sun.kjava.RadioButton
• com.sun.kjava.RadioGroup
• com.sun.kjava.ScrollOwner
• com.sun.kjava.ScrollTextBox
• com.sun.kjava.Slider
• com.sun.kjava.TextField
• com.sun.kjava.TextBox
• com.sun.kjava.VerticalScrollBar

Each Java class can be loaded or removed on demand, and its memory usage can be checked on a per-class basis. There seems to be no performance difference between the Java applications and the other Pilot goodies; in fact, some of the games can be played faster than the stylus or the human eyes can catch with them.

If anyone here is interested, I'll write a review of KJava in the Palm V after we run our compatibility and performance tests on it. A large number of classes in our products are written in Java assembler, so this will be a great chance to check if Sun/3Com are keeping the JVM specification honest.

Cheers!

Eugene