PhD defence by Stephan Erbs Korsholm

In partial fulfillment of the terms for obtaining the Ph.D.-degree, Stephan Erbs Korsholm will give a lecture on the following subject:
Java for Cost Effective Embedded Real-Time Software
on Friday 9th of November 2012, 10.00,
in room 02.13 at Selma Lagerlöfs Vej 300

Abstract:
This thesis presents the analysis, design and implementation of the Hardware near Virtual Machine (HVM) - a Java virtual machine for embedded devices. The HVM supports the execution of Java programs on low-end  embedded hardware environments with as little as a few kB of RAM and 32 kB of ROM. The HVM is based on a Java-to-C translation mechanism and it produces self-contained, strict ANSI-C code that has been specially crafted to allow it to be embedded into existing C based build and execution environments; environments which may be based on non standard C compilers and libraries. The HVM does not require a POSIX-like OS, nor does it require a C runtime library to be present for the target. The main distinguishing feature of the HVM is to support the stepwise addition of Java into an existing C based build and execution environment for low-end embedded systems. This will allow for the gradual introduction of the Java language, tools and methods into a existing C based development environment. Through program specialization, based on a static whole-program analysis, the application is shrinked to only include a conservative approximation of actual dependencies, thus keeping down the size of the resulting Java based software components. The Safety-Critical Java specification (SCJ), Level 0 and 1, has been implemented for the HVM, which includes preemptive task scheduling. The HVM supports well known concepts for device level programming, such as Hardware Objects and 1st level interrupt handling, and it adds some new ones such as native variables. The HVM is integrated with Eclipse.

Members of the assessment committee are Dr. James J. Hunt, CEO, aicas GmbH. Professor Peter Sestoft, ITU Copenhagen. Associate professor, René Rydhof Hansen, Department of Computer Science at Aalborg University. Professor Bent Thomsen, Department of Computer Science at Aalborg University is Stephan Erbs Korsholms supervisor.

All interested parties are welcome. After the defense the department will be hosting a small reception in cluster 1.