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WHAT’S THE APPEAL OF JAVA OUTSIDE OF CORPORATE
COMPUTING?
The appeal of the Java language and its associated computing
paradigm (see story facing page) is not limited to within the corporation.
Raj Parekh, vice president of marketing, Sun Microelectronics Systems
Corp. in Mountain View, Calif. believes it has just as much appeal in
the many embedded processors users now own: cellular phones, pagers,
personal digital assistants, electronic day timers containing calendar
and business card files.
Parekh believes these devices will all eventually connect into a corporate
network to access information. The advent of wireless messaging is making
it possible for pagers, PDAs, and cellular phones to access e-mail.
(Wired communications and cellular phone modems are providing notebooks
the ability to log into the corporate network and access all the resources
of the corporation as well.)
With Java, embedded processors inside cellular phones, pagers, and PDAs,
can download Java applet—small programs that can access and execute
applications programs on servers. Once downloaded, these programs can
reconcile a calendar on a user’s desktop with the calendar in
his PDA or electronic day timer.
Furthermore, the mobile user wirelessly connecting into a network resembles
an information worker in that he is typically accessing information
from a data base, thus the function closely resembles the dedicated
information worker inside the corporation.
Sun does not own the embedded processor market that may form around
the Java language to serve in these wireless products. Another company
that has launched a Java embedded processor is Patriot Scientific Corp.
in San Diego, Calif.
Its ShBoom Microprocessor is a highly integrated, stack-based, 32- bit
RISC processor that operates at 100Mhz internally to produce 100 native
MIPS peak performance.
Other major embedded processor suppliers Advanced Risc Machines, Intel,
Motorola, among others will have products to compete in the Java arena.
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