Design of a Native Embedded Java Processor

Student: Ashley John Partis

Supervisor: Dr. Adam Postula

Category: Computer Systems Engineering Thesis Project

This thesis pertains to the (partial) implementation of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) in hardware, specifically aimed at running as the single processing unit in an embedded system. The use of Java as the main programming language in an embedded solution is a fairly new concept, but one which is starting to gain pervasive widespread appeal and support. By providing a hardware Java solution, a native environment for the execution of Java classes is created which has the advantage of being faster and requiring fewer resources than a non-native Java embedded processor dependent on a Java interpreter or a JIT (Just In Time compiler).

The Java Virtual Machine for this thesis was designed in a combination of hardware and software. After investigating and breaking down the Java Virtual Machine Specification, the complex instructions and features of the JVM were selected to be implemented in software, while the remainder of the JVM to be implemented was to selected be realized in a simple non-pipelined multi-cycle stack based processor. The software element was written in the native language of the processor (Java) to be run on-chip and this, along with the rest of the JVM that was to be implemented in hardware, was modelled on an FPGA.

The final result was a (stable / tested at 24MHz) native Java processor that was essentially a scaled-down version of the Java Virtual Machine, and could run simple Java programs (classes) on-chip. For reasons of time, speed, size and complexity it became impractical to complete a full implementation. The processor supports many features of the Java Virtual Machine; however, it cannot be classified as a true or “pure” implementation of the JVM as not all of the features in the Java Virtual Machine Specification were implemented.

Poster Presentation (PDF)

Thesis Document (PDF)