Embedded Java - JavaTech: An Introduction to Scientific and Technical Computing with Java - page 661

24.8 Java boards
A number of board-level systems with the above Java processors are available.
These include boards that provide more or less complete computer systems with
features such as additional memory, I/O via serial lines and Ethernet, output
digital-to-analog and input analog-to-digital converters. There are also boards
that are intended to plug into the expansion slots of carrier cards that in turn
provide these additional capabilities.
We discuss some examples of Java boards below. Note that many of the Java
processors discussed above can be obtained in evaluation boards for easy exper-
imentation and testing.
24.8.1 TINI TM -Tiny InterNet Interface
The TINI TM specification, developed by Dallas Semiconductor, aims to bring a
network connection and high-level control and monitoring capabilities to devices
ranging from industrial processing equipment to consumer appliances [26-28].
The TINI interface comes in a small, low-power package yet it can implement a
complete TCI/IP node and an embedded Java server.
The TINI reference specification consists of a microcontroller on a 72-pin
SIMM (Single Inline Memory Module) format card. Figure 24.2(a) shows a
SIMM card from Imsys that follows the TINI format (but with the Imsys Cjip
processor.) The card also includes an Ethernet controller, RS232, a 1-Wire Bus
(a proprietary standard from Dallas Semiconductor), and SRAM. A Java runtime
system is held in flash ROM. The TINI card plugs into a carrier board that
provides power and the physical connectors for the I/O interfaces. Several carrier
boards with a variety of features are available for the TINI module from different
vendors.
An operating system called TINI OS provides basic services including a file
system, memory and I/O management, and task switching. You can ftp or telnet
into a Unix-like command shell (called slush )toload and run Java programs. The
shell can be loaded via the serial port with an IDE called JavaKit available from
Dallas Semiconductor. After development is finished, a standalone program can
be loaded in place of the shell. The JVM takes up only 40 KB yet allows for all
the basic Java capabilities including threading and the complete set of primitive
types. A garbage collector runs as a native task while all other tasks run as Java
applications. A round-robin task scheduler allocates processing in fixed 8-ms
time slices.
Programs can be compiled elsewhere with the standard SDK compiler but
with the TINI class packages instead of the standard ones. Your programs
can use classes from the core packages - java.lang , java.io , java.net ,
java.util - and the set of custom packages ( com.dalsemi.* ) from Dallas