Dr. Dobb's | Java Real-Time; Early Access for Linux

Java Real-Time; Early Access for Linux

Sun has announced early access to its Java Real-Time System (RTS) for Linux

January 31, 2008
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/embedded-systems/java-real-time-early-access-for-linux/206101018

Eric Bruno is a contributing editor to Dr. Dobb's Journal. He can be contacted at www.ericbruno.com.

Sun has announced early access to its Java Real-Time System (RTS) for Linux, Java RTS 2.1_EA. Previously Java RTS was only available on Solaris 10 x86 or SPARC. With this early access release, Sun brings real-time Java capabilities to Linux with POSIX real-time extensions.

Although only SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10 is officially supported at this time, it is possible that other properly configured Linux distributions that implement this interface can also run Java RTS 2.1_EA. Additionally, support is planned for Red Hat Enterprise MRG 1.0 as well.

Solaris was originally chosen for Java RTS due to its built-in support for real-time applications. Temporal correctness is still being worked on by the Linux community, but currently the OS configuration needs to include a version 2.6.21, or later, Linux kernel with the latest RT patch, and glibc version 2.5. (See www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/rt/ to obtain the appropriate RT patch.)