Real-Time Java™ Platform Programming

A Brief History of Real-Time Java

Many people contributed to the idea and its realization. Gallons of rhetorical blood and sweat were invested in a brief specification. Kelvin Nilsen deserves credit for starting the process. Years before Java appeared in public, Kelvin invented a garbage collection algorithm with good real-time characteristics. First, he embedded most of his garbage collection system in hardware, then he built software-only implementations. Kelvin promoted his idea at academic conferences and in the marketplace, but it did not catch on. One problem may have been that it required a specially instrumented compiler. Java was just what Kelvin needed, a new language with no legacy code, which generated interpreted bytecode and which ...