One of the features at the recent JavaOneSM Conference was a panel discussion on the challenges and solutions in the application of JavaTM technology to mobile devices. In his report on the panel, Ed Ort noted that small footprints, low price points and reduced screen sizes all make the task of providing Java technology on mobile devices challenging.

Markus Levy, senior analyst for the Microprocessor Report, listed several challenges that included higher quality graphics, more dynamic applications and richer content, cost and performance and battery life.

Expressing the hardware interests of the panel, Rod Crawford, director of Third Party Software for ARM, a vendor of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) microprocessors, cited the recent extension to the ARM architecture that allows the native execution of approximately 130 Java programming language bytecodes in the ARM core without the need for a coprocessor (or the power that coprocessor would consume).

Paul McAlinden, strategic marketing manager for Intel's Handheld Computing Division, highlighted Intel's XScale micro architecture as an excellent choice for the Java platform. He also observed that emerging Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler technologies and adaptive compiler technologies offer a better balance of power and performance than bytecode translation as a method of Java technology acceleration for some classes of devices.

Guillaume Comeau, chief integration architect for Zucotto Wireless, insisted that system design decisions needed to consider both the hardware and software elements of a system.

Addressing the software side of the issue, Eric Wilson, vice president of infrastructure for JAMDAT Mobile, underscored the fact that Java technology on the JavaTM 2 Platform, Micro Edition (J2METM) platform makes things easier and that J2ME is highly portable across devices for which JAMDAT builds applications.

Jay Steele, director of graphics architecture for Research In Motion, explained that his group's very generalized applications are meant to solve a general graphics problem which is client-server in nature. Issues of customizing or tailoring content for devices are handled on the server side.

Eric Wilson pointed out the considerable work necessary in tailoring an application to a particular device because the memory on a cell phone is precious and efficient use of those resources is at a premium. [...read more...]

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