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From the Book: PREFACE: Dreams In 1997 the idea of writing real-time applications in the Java programming language seemed unrealistic. Real-time programmers talk about wanting consistent timing behavior more than absolute speed, but that doesn't mean they donIt require excellent overall performance. The Java runtime is sometimes interpreted, and almost always uses a garbage collector. The early versions were not known for their blistering performance. Nevertheless, Java platforms were already being incorporated into real-time systems. It is fairly easy to build a hybrid system that uses C for modules that have real-time requirements and other components written to the Java platform. It is also possible to implement the Java interpreter in hardware (for performance), and integrate the system without a garbage collector (for consistent performance). aJile Systems produces a Java processor with acceptable real-time characteristics. Until the summer of 1998, efforts toward support for real-time programming on the Java platform were fragmented. Kelvin Nilsen from NewMonics and Lisa Carnahan from the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) led one effort, Greg Bollella from IBM led a group of companies that had a stake in Java technology and real-time, and Sun had an internal real-time project based on the Java platform. In the summer of 1998 the three groups merged. The real-time requirements working group included Kelvin Nilsen from NewMonics, Bill Foote and Kevin Russell from Sun, and the group of companies led by Greg Bollella. It also included a diverse selection of technical people from across the real-time industry and afewrepresentatives with a more marketing or management orientation. The requirements group convened periodically until early 1999. Its final output was a document, Requirements for Real-time Extensions for the Java Platform, detailing the requirements the group had developed, and giving some rationale for those requirements. It can be found on the web at ...