EJVM: an economic Java run-time environment for embedded devices

As network-enabled embedded devices and Java grow in their popularity, embe dded system researchers start seeking ways to make these devices Java-enabl ed. However, it is a challenge to apply Java technology to these devices du e to their shortage of resources. In this paper, we propose EJVM (Economic Java Virtual Machine), an economic way to run Java programs on network-enabled and resource-limited embedded devices. Espousing the architecture proposed by distributed JVM, we store a ll Java codes on the server to reduce the storage needs of the client devic es. In addition, we use two novel techniques to reduce the client-side memo ry footprints: server-side class representation conversion and on-demand by tecode loading. Finally, we maintain client-side caches and provide perform ance evaluation on different caching policies. We implement EJVM by modifyi ng a freely available JVM implementation, Kaffe. From the experiment result s, we show that EJVM can reduce Java heap requirements by about 20-50 % and achieve 90 % of the original performance. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.