September 27, 2006; 02:57 AM San Diego, CA - Aonix®, the provider of
the PERC® technologies for embedded Java™ developers, announced that
National Oilwell Varco has selected the Aonix PERC Ultra™ virtual
machine (VM) for its Java™-based control system that manages automated
robotic drilling. National Oilwell Varco, a leading designer and
manufacturer of a broad range of technologically advanced drilling
equipment, AC and DC drives, pipe-handling equipment, controls and
instrumentation, made an extensive evaluation of embedded Java
offerings. Varco selected PERC based on its very fast, predictable
performance and small memory footprint.
To meet current
application needs, Varco’s engineering team converted an existing Varco
design for automated robotic drilling equipment using a Java-based
control system running on embedded Linux. This design consists of a
Java-based robotic control system on various x86 SBC platforms with a
2.6.11 Linux kernel. Varco required jitter below 3 ms in executing its
software application over a one-hour period using its embedded
computing platform. The engineering team tested numerous JVMs on its
platform, but only PERC could meet the need for very fast, predictable
performance without a tremendous memory or hard drive footprint.
“J9
from IBM could not come close to the performance that I was able to
achieve with PERC,” noted Kent Hulich, Varco software development
manager. “We needed timing intervals below 10 ms, and Aonix provided a
version of PERC that takes advantage of POSIX CLOCK_REALTIME timers in
Linux 2.6 to provide very accurate timing to the application.”
But,
accurate timing alone was not enough. Varco needed to preempt memory
reclamation at any point in time. To do this, Varco configured PERC to
place all Java threads in a real-time scheduling class and set critical
thread priorities above the PERC garbage collector so they could
interrupt the garbage collector as needed. Aonix’ support team assisted
Varco engineers in achieving optimal configuration quickly and easily
and with no changes to the source code of the Varco Java test program.
“We’re
very pleased that PERC was flexible enough to manage the jitter and
easily achieve Varco’s specifications,” noted Dave Wood, Aonix
marketing director. “This ability has enabled the PERC Developers at
Varco to create a highly stable and accurate control loop in which to
implement their software applications. It’s always gratifying each time
customers confirm the superior technology of PERC, particularly for
technically challenging projects like the Varco robotic drilling
system.”
First introduced nine years ago, PERC Ultra is the
most widely used real-time virtual machine available for Java™
developers, with fielded installations in telecommunications,
telematics, avionics, deep space exploration, industrial automation,
and office automation applications. PERC supports most major real-time
operating systems and a variety of target processors including PowerPC,
XScale, ARM, and Intel x86 architectures.
PERC is a clean-room
virtual machine expressly created for demanding embedded and real-time
systems requiring J2SE™ support. PERC delivers the ease and efficiency
of Java™ Standard Edition support without sacrificing integrity,
performance, or real-time behavior. It offers AOT and JIT compilation,
remote debug support, deterministic garbage collection, standard
graphics and extended commercial RTOS support.
PERC Ultra is
the ideal solution for embedded applications of high complexity, thanks
to PERC Ultra’s predictable performance and its extensive support of
off-the-shelf J2SE libraries and components. Its sister product, PERC
Pico, meets the needs of resource-constrained hard real-time
applications, featuring performance and footprint characteristics
comparable to C. PERC Pico is smaller and faster than any other
real-time virtual machine, yet it preserves key virtues of Java™ such
as portability, reliability, and scalability.
PERC Ultra and
PERC Pico are interoperable within a single application. For the first
time, it is now possible for Java developers to create complete complex
applications from infrastructure to the device level, without resorting
to the use of other languages with less portability and robust memory
use for specialized components.
Shipping and Availability PERC
Ultra is available for Linux, Windows, and Solaris hosts and supports a
wide variety of processor architectures and real-time operating
systems. PERC development tools are available at no charge in
combination with a maintenance contract.
About Aonix® Aonix
(www.aonix.com) offers mission- and safety-critical solutions primarily to the military
and aerospace, telecommunications and transportation industries. Aonix
delivers the leading high-reliability, real-time embedded virtual
machine solution for running Java™ programs deployed today and has the
largest number of certified Ada applications at the highest level of
criticality. Headquartered in San Diego, CA and Paris, France, Aonix
operates sales offices throughout North America and Europe in addition
to offering a network of international distributors.
|