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Colloquia

The Metronome Project: High-level Real-time Programming in Java

David F. Bacon
IBM Research

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Sage 3510 - 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Refreshments at 3:30 p.m.

Abstract:

Real-time systems have reached a level of complexity beyond the scaling capability of the low-level or restricted languages traditionally used for real-time programming.

The goal of the Metronome project is to make it possible to program such systems in Java, retaining the productivity and security of Java's high-level semantics, yet making it possible to develop systems that are highly deterministic.

In this talk I will give an overview of our Metronome real-time garbage collection technology which overcomes the major hurdle to using Java for real-time systems.

I will then describe our progress towards our ongoing research agenda: construction of a provably correct real-time garbage collector capable of providing worst case latencies of 100 us, capable of scaling from sensor nodes up to large multiprocessors; specialized programming constructs that retain the safety and simplicity of Java, and yet provide sub-microsecond latencies; the extension of Java's "write once, run anywhere" principle from functional correctness to timing behavior; on-line analysis and visualization that aids in the understanding of complex behaviors; and a principled probabilistic analysis methodology for bounding the behavior of the resulting systems.

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Last updated: October 31, 2005