April 2008 Archives

Are you a student? Do you use Java? Do you want to learn about all the Java goodness? How about attend my extra special technical session next Thursday? Sun has announced a limited number of FREE (yes, that's free) full conference passes to JavaOne. These are mega-valuable, worth about $2500. You even get to see Smashmouth, a band that was popular way before you were students. And you get to hang out with Sentilla in the JavaOne Pavilion, our Technical Sessions, and a few other places that will be announced in the coming days. We're also giving some goodies away at our booth, so stop by to make sure you get more free stuff. Awesome!

Here's the link, but do it quickly, because they tell us space is limited. Current estimates are at 15,000 developers attending JavaOne, and we're told its now the single largest developer conference in the world.

http://developers.sun.com/events/studentprogram/

Update: And, to top it off, Neil Young is going to be part of the keynote on May 6th. Very cool.

We were just at the Embedded Systems Conference showing off our Java-based platform before a live audience. For those who don't know, the ESC is the largest conference of its type in the world, focusing on the tiny computers that run everything from thermostats to military systems. Embedded is a fascinating world -- you can't possibly begin to imagine the diversity of applications that these systems run until you see a show like this. It gives you an appreciation for the "silent cycles" that don't grab any headlines but keep this modern world around us humming along. (Here's our official press release.)

We were invited into the Texas Instruments Pavilion, which is space that TI sets aside for its partners. We were very glad to participate, as TI is a major supplier of (among many products) the MSP430 that forms the core of our first pervasive computing platform. TI ships billions of microprocessors, microcontrollers, logic gates, and other semiconductors year after year -- which is a number that seems gigantic until you begin to understand all the products within which these chips are embedded.

There were a number of things that were great about the show, three of which stood out to me. First, it gave us a chance to talk with customers first-hand. It's always great to talk to customers, and was doubly-great since so many people were interested in how Java could actually work on this device class. The conversations followed a fairly distinct pattern: "No way! Really? How? (demo) Cool..." and then immediately followed by a host of questions on how to use it and how to get it. That's pretty sweet, because any time you can capture someone's attention at a trade show -- without, ahem, other visual aids shall we say -- you know you've got something truly compelling.

Second, it gave us a chance to check out some of the really nifty things that embedded systems do. We only needed to look over our shoulders to the other partners in the TI Pavilion for some great stuff. We talked to rechargeable battery providers, end-solution vendors, and scrappy inventors. Really exciting to see.

Last, the show reinforced to me what an impact Java is going to make in this space. Embedded is huge, truly huge, yet is a really difficult space. Most of that world is in a land of embedded C and other low-level languages -- not a place you want to be if you can avoid it. Problem is, for this industry there was no other choice. Sentilla is going to change all that, and it's going to be a real amazing ride when that happens. As I strolled the floor I imagined the show in the coming years and the impact that Java will have on the products and services there. An indulgence, to be sure, but true nonetheless....

In the past two weeks, a variety of airlines decided to pull planes from service to investigate the condition of the aircraft. In particular, the aircraft's wiring was not checked for integrity; ensuring that each aircraft has continuous communication between the cockpit and critical controls. Thousands of travelers, like me, were stuck to the ground waiting for the fleets to return to service. At the heart of the issue was aircraft wiring; specifically wiring that was not routinely maintained as defined by the FAA. The FAA made it clear that airlines had 18 months to check their electrical wiring. This order was issued in September 2006. The picture to the right shows the aircraft wiring in the MD-80 aircraft; the exact airplane grounded by American Airlines.

250,000 passengers were affected by American Airlines cancellations alone. Besides the customers that decided to book on other airlines, lots of customers were offered $500 vouchers and given hotel rooms. If I was in that position, this is the least that the airlines could have done.

Why? Because this entire incident was completely avoidable. Airlines typically maintain their fleet through a process known as "time-based maintenance". That means that every so many months, airlines bring each plane in for service. Because we don't know the condition of the aircraft, they are maintained periodically in the hope that all issues are caught.

Why am I blogging about this, when many of us have been affected and know about the problem? The reason is that a solution is available today. Many companies have been adopting "condition-based maintenance". What it means is that instead of bringing planes in periodically, bring planes in when they need maintenance.

How? Use pervasive computers. With wireless computers attached to the wiring on planes, the very thing that grounded airlines, we can detect when the wiring is failing and notify maintenance. This means that we don't ground fleets; instead planes are serviced as they need. This is good for both airlines and passengers; planes are only taken out of service as needed, saving money and reducing the inconvenience for passengers.

Sentilla is solving the aircraft maintenance problem today, amongst a multitude of other problems. The next time you're on a flight and they say "I'm sorry, we're going to be delayed due to a maintenance issue", you should ask them "why don't you have Sentilla's computers to prevent that problem?"

Are you interested in learning the ins and outs of Sentilla's novel Java platform? Do you want to kick the tires and learn how to build efficient pervasive Java applications? Do you have questions about how garbage collection works? Do you want to know about the Driver model? How about performing asynchronous operations from a synchronous threaded context in Java? And how do you manage all those threads on a resource constrained device with only 10kB of memory?

You are in luck! I'm pleased to announce that I will be covering these topics and more at this year's JavaOne conference. I am presenting a Technical Session in the Java Mobile and Embedded Track (TS-5428). The session is intended for intermediate to advanced Java and system programmers. We'll be covering the cool technical details of how we fit all of this Java goodness into such a small package. More importantly, I'll tell you how you can take advantage of Sentilla's platform today to build applications that simply haven't been possible before!

JavaOne, held and sponsored by Sun, is the premier venue for everything Java attended by over 15,000 Java professionals. JavaOne is in San Francisco from May 6 to 9th. Registration is open now.

Topics include:

• Pervasive computing overview
• Virtual machine architecture for embedded computers
• Driver architecture
• Memory management
• Asynchronous in a Synchronous context
• Bridging the real world and enterprise world through objects

James Gosling tells us that this year's JavaOne registration is already up over last year's, with steady growth from year to year. We recommend registering soon if you don't want to miss out, and sign up for the Sentilla technical session. The important number you need to remember is TS-5428, that's the session identifier to sign up.

This is the first of many activities that Sentilla will be participating in at JavaOne. We'll going to turn tons of Java programmers into real world programmers throughout JavaOne. Stay tuned for many more announcements.