Java in Safety Critical Systems

Ada has been the preferred language for safety critical applications,
but this is beginning to change. The number of Ada developers is
diminishing, while the complexity of applications is increasing. C and
C++ are poor alternatives to Ada and many ideas from the Ada
community have made their way into the realtime Java
specifications.

Though strongly related to standard Java technology such as J2SE and
J2EE, realtime Java is really a different beast. Realtime Java sets
itself apart by having much stronger threading semantics and a means
of avoiding timing anomalies due to garbage collection, ideally while
maintaining the reference consistency automatic object deallocation
ensures.

In the past, reference consistency was maintained by disallowing or
severely limiting dynamic memory management. This approach works well
for state machine like tasks, but not for more complex applications.
The up and coming Safety Critical Java standard (JSR 302) provides some
more flexibility than currently tolerated by providing a stack like
approach to memory allocation and deallocation. This will enable the
Java language to be used at the highest criticality levels in the near
term, but does not address increasing complexity well.

New work on object oriented technology in SG-5 of the SC 205 / WG 71
Plenary to update the DO-178 standards, will make certification of Java
technology easier, including the use of virtual machine technology and garbage
collection.

This talk outlines the important Java standards, such as the
realtime Specification for Java (JSR 1 and JSR 282) and Safety Critical
Java (JSR 302), as well as proposed changes from SG-5 for object
oriented technology. New garbage collection technology will also be
covered. This should give the attendee a good background in the
state-of-the-art of realtime Java Technology and safety certification.