Atego has introduced the Aonix PERC Ultra SMP 5.4 with support for concurrent multi-processor garbage collection technology. The tool responds to the need for multiprocessor and multicore technologies in complex mission-critical embedded and real-time Java applications.
The company's Virtual Machine technology and supporting tool chain were recently tested and deployed in time-critical applications ranging from the Aegis weapons system on the guided missile cruiser, USS Bunker Hill, to the in-flight entertainment and cabin management systems on the Cessna Citation CJ4 business jet. The tool adds support to empower large mission-critical systems to fully utilise multiple processors at peak performance.
The earlier version of the tool provided parallel GC (garbage collection), a memory management technique allowing the use of all processors/cores for faster identification and collection of unused objects. A dual quad-core Xeon-based Linux real-time system could collect discarded memory nearly eight times faster than a single-threaded garbage collector but could not run concurrent with other application threads until now.
The new version of the tool further improves the efficiency of the garbage collection process by implementing concurrent GC. Compared to parallel GC, concurrent GC allows the collection of unused objects by multiple processors while Java application threads continue to operate concurrently. The tool dynamically allocates available processors/cores to perform garbage collection tasks without disrupting active Java threads on other cores. This enhances the ability of the GC to pace the garbage collection rate to the application's memory allocation rate.
The tool supports new SMP-capable RTOS platforms and target processors. In addition to previously supported Linux development systems targeting Red Hat Linux, Red Hawk Linux, and Wind River Linux on x86 targets, new support for Linux and Windows systems targeting QNX Neutrino on x86, and Wind River VxWorks on x86, are available.
