aicas joins partnership with EADS Astrium

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24-Oct-03

aicas joins partnership with EADS Astrium

Karlsruhe, 24 October 2003.

Today, aicas has joined a partnership with EADS Astrium for the promotion of Java solutions in the space domain. With AERO-VM, both partners offer a Java implementation tailored for embedded space applications. AERO-VM is the result of an ESA project that developed the first European hard realtime Java solution dedicated to the space domain.

aicas' director of development Dr. Fridtjof Siebert said: "I am delighted to see that our realtime Java technology finds its way into more and more demanding application areas. With the support of EADS Astrium, we have found an excellent partner to emphasize the importance and benefits of Java based software development in mission critical applications."

AERO-VM is a standard Java bytecode interpreter and an ahead of time compiler for hard real-time embedded space systems. Its novel architecture sweeps aside the barriers that have held the widespread adoption of Java and JNI in the embedded space market.

The AERO-VM provides hard real-time guarantees for all primitive Java operations. This enables all of Java's features to be used for on-board hard real-time tasks. New features are included for OO software development like dynamic allocation of objects, inheritance, and dynamic binding. The use of dynamic class loading with AERO-VM enables the hot swapping of code and the dynamic addition of new features.

Realtime software development in Java becomes possible through support of the Realtime Specification for Java extensions and the use of a unique deterministic memory management technology (garbage collection). A unique feature is provided with a new dual execution mode that allows the possibility to mix in full transparency compiled and interpreted Java code.

As the basis of AERO-VM, aicas' realtime Java implementation JamaicaVM was chosen. JamaicaVM provides deterministic execution in conjunction with low memory overhead and high runtime performance as required by critical on-board satellite applications. Deterministic automatic memory management (garbage collection) is a requirement for object-oriented development in time-critical applications.

The use of an interpreted solution based on the Java language brings a number of benefits to space systems. It enables the specification, development and validation of application programs late in the life-cycle even during operational activity of the satellite in orbit. Furthermore, it permits one to isolate the execution context of applications from the rest of the system to protect vital functions from software failures.

AERO-VM may be employed on a number of different processor architectures including space-specific processors such as ERC32 (Sparc7) and Leon (Sparc8), but also PowerPC, ARM, Intel IA32, etc. Supported realtime operating systems include VxWorks, QNX, LinuxRT. Support for RTEMS will be available in shortly.

Partners in the AERO development are EADS Astrium SAS, France, aicas GmbH, Germany, the University of Link�ping, Sweden, the European Space Agency and CNES.

For further information, please contact

aicas GmbH
Dr. Fridtjof Siebert
Director of Development
Tel. +49 721 663 968-23
Fax. +49 721 663 968-93
siebert@aicas.com

EADS Astrium SAS
Frederic Deladerriere
frederic.deladerriere@astrium.eads.net

Additional online information:

AERO-Website: http://www.aero-vm.com
Press Releases: http://www.aicas.com/press.html
Press Pictures: http://www.aicas.com/images.html
E-Mail: info@aicas.com

About aicas GmbH

aicas provides Java technology for realtime and safety critical embedded applications. The realtime Java implementation JamaicaVM uses the latest runtime system technology to combine deterministic execution with highest runtime performance. This provides an ideal development environment for demanding applications in areas such as industrial automation, aerospace, military and telecommunication. aicas was founded in 2001 as a spin off from the FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik and the University of Karlsruhe. aicas headquarters are located in Karlsruhe, Germany. For more information on aicas, see www.aicas.com.

About EADS Astrium

EADS Astrium is wholly owned by EADS SPACE. In 2002 EADS SPACE had a turnover of EURO 2.2 billion and 12.300 employees in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain. EADS Astrium's satellite business activities cover complete civil and military telecommunications and Earth Observation systems, Science and Navigation programmes, and all spacecraft avionics and equipment.

About JamaicaVM

JamaicaVM is a Java implementation for deeply embedded and time critical systems. JamaicaVM is based on an advanced realtime memory management technology (garbage collection) enabling the use of Java technology even for time and safety critical applications. Tools, such as the Jamaica Compiler and Builder, optimize the runtime performance and memory demand and provide for the analysis of the realtime behaviour of Java applications.