Dr. Dobb's Journal July 1999
Frustrated by the Sun Microsystems "Formal Process" procedure for developing real-time extensions to Java, a consortium of 26 companies -- including NewMonics, Hewlett-Packard, Aonix, and Microsoft -- formed the Real-Time Java Working Group last December. Its goal is to create a standard set of real-time extensions to the Java language, and to make the interfaces publicly and freely available.
Currently, the group has reached consensus on several issues and expects to have a specification available sometime this summer. As it currently stands, the real-time extensions will be separated into a real-time core, separate from the standard Java Virtual Machine and libraries. The real-time core will have a separate heap, but will be able to cooperate with the garbage-collection mechanism of the standard Java heap. Real-time garbage collection remains one of the stickier issues and will most likely be addressed after the base specification is approved.
The Java standardization process has been controversial, especially in the embedded space, where many companies have lambasted Sun's process as being too closed and not adequately addressing the needs of the embedded programming community. Kelvin Nilsen of NewMonics thinks that the two standardization efforts are complementary, and states, "We want not to view this as a battle. We're trying to create products that meet customer needs. I think all of our members have that as our main objective."
More information on the Real-Time Java Working Group is available at http://www .newmonics.com/webroot/rtjwg.html.
-- Eugene Eric Kim
To combat the growing number of airline accidents and reduce airport gridlock, NASA has installed what it claims is the world's first full-scale virtual reality air traffic control tower. Located at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, the virtual airport tower is an accurate approximation of real air traffic control towers found in America's largest airports, including Chicago's O'Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Atlanta's Hartsfield.
The two-story, 5130-square-foot facility uses a Silicon Graphics Onyx2 workstation to process 3D graphics, imaging data, and video data in real time. Using data sources such as high-resolution satellite imagery, digitized photographs, and architectural data, the system portrays any airport in the world in realistic 360-degree, high-resolution virtual reality through the tower's 12 huge tempered-glass windows.
The virtual airport tower lets air traffic controllers move around as they would in a real tower, adding an even greater feel of realism to the computer-generated images that simulate weather conditions, seasons, time-of-day, and the movement of up to 200 aircraft and ground vehicles. The top floor of the tower is a 24-foot diameter tower cab that supports 12 air traffic control positions. The lower floor can house up to eight ramp control and airport operators and up to 13 "virtual" pilots to support the airport simulation.
NASA designed the virtual tower so that visitors must walk by its SGI image generator on their way to the top of the control tower. The system, housed behind a wall of glass, has 16 processors, two gigabytes of memory, and six graphics pipes. Each pipe has four raster managers. For more information, see http://sdtf.arc.nasa.gov/sdtf/.
-- Jonathan Erickson
In a real-world experiment to test the viability of Java-based smart cards, several hundred U.S. General Services Administration employees will have their government identification and credit cards replaced with smart cards over the next few months. Included on the smart cards, implemented by Siemens Microelectronics, are a Citibank Visa credit card and a new version of IBM's Java Card OS. Employees will use the smart cards to gain access to office buildings, log on to computers (using a fingerprint reader on the keyboards to compare with fingerprints stored on the cards), and sign e-mail (using digital signatures stored on the cards).
-- Jonathan Erickson
Early this spring, Mark Weiser, chief technologist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, passed away after a brief illness. Weiser was world-renowned as an innovative computer scientist and father of "ubiquitous computing," a term he coined to describe a time when invisible computers will be embedded in everyday objects. His family has asked that donations be made to a fund that will provide tuition scholarships to promising Computer Science undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley. Individuals who wish to contribute to the Mark D. Weiser Excellence in Computing Scholarship Fund may send checks to: Berkeley Engineering Fund, University of California, Berkeley, 201 McLaughlin Hall, #1722, Berkeley, CA 94720-1722. Please write in the left-hand corner of the check the designation of the gift "Mark D. Weiser Excellence in Computing Scholarship Fund." For more information on donations, send e-mail to katiem@coe.berkeley.edu.
-- Jonathan Erickson
A University of Southern California engineer is developing a process to mass-produce tiny mechanical and electromechanical devices with complex features smaller than the width of a human hair. The process, called "Electrochemical Fabrication" (EFAB), produces complex, 3D microdevices quickly and economically without cleanroom facilities, says project leader Adam Cohen. Led by Cohen, a team of USC engineers recently used EFAB to fabricate a metal chain only 290 microns wide. All of its joints are fully articulated and movable. Instead of assembling the chain one link at a time, the team used EFAB to make the entire 14-link chain in a single process. Cohen believes EFAB can facilitate the production of tiny devices that are practical only if large quantities can be produced at low unit costs. Examples include sensors for detecting the imminent failure of bridges, alleviating highway congestion, or helping to predict weather or even earthquakes. Tiny wing actuators could reduce turbulence and cut aircraft fuel consumption. According to Cohen, other applications might include mass-producing mechanisms for bar-code scanners, lowering the cost from the current $50-$100 to produce, to less than $1. Likewise, coronary stents, used to keep arteries open, which cost about $100 to manufacture now, can be produced for under $5 with EFAB. Members of the USC team include Uri Frodis, Fan-Gang Tseng, and Gang Zhang. For more information, see http://www.isi.edu/efab/.
-- Jonathan Erickson