IBM rushes to build Java-enabled chip for NCs

San Mateo (May 24, 1997) — IBM’s Microelectronics Division will be one of the first entities with a Java accelerator chip.

“We plan to be in step with the Sun roadmap for Java hardware acceleration [and will have] samples in the fourth quarter or the first quarter of 1998,” said Jesse Parker, director of segment marketing at IBM Microelectronics.

“IBM views Java acceleration in hardware as an important thing to bring to the marketplace,” Parker added. And he left no secret where it will first appear.

“Making Java run efficiently is the first order of design principle in creating an NC,” Parker said.

Although there are many ways to speed up Java, Parker noted, some analysts believe IBM will use its own PowerPC core logic.

“It’s my impression that they are working on a separate [Java] accelerator device that will hang off a PowerPC core logic,” said one source familiar with the workings of the division.

In addition, IBM Research is looking to ease the transition from legacy hardware and software to a Java environment. The Thomas J. Watson Research Center has developed a prototype that makes very long instruction word (VLIW) architectures compatible with existing architectures, including Intel’s x86 and Java virtual machine.

Code-named Daisy, or Dynamically Architected Instruction Set from Yorktown, the technology fundamentally introduces hardware features that simplify emulation of existing architectures so that software for an older architecture can run without any modification.

IBM’s own network computer strategy indicates that an IBM-branded network computer will include Lotus Java applets, the HotJava browser, and technology from its Microelectronics Division.

IBM may not be first for long with a Java chip in a market that is estimated to grow to billion within the next two years, according to Dataquest, in San Jose, CA.

“They may well be ahead of other folks, but not by a ton,” said Jordan Selburn, principal analyst with Dataquest. “But it’s always a mistake to underestimate the impact that IBM can have on the market.”

However, IBM officials declined to elaborate further on their plans for Java ASICs.

Sun has also announced plans to manufacture its own Java chips. A Sun representative indicated that sample units of Java-driven mobile units from Toshiba and Lucky Goldstar will be available by the first quarter of 1998.

“The Toshiba unit will be marketed as a portable NC but will look very similar to the Libretto [subnotebook],” said Marge Brea, director of marketing for Sun Microsystems, in Mountain View, CA.

Meanwhile, the prospect of IBM’s Daisy technology becoming a commercially available product is far on the horizon, according to some officials from IBM Research.

“The [Daisy] project is purely on a research level right now. There is no commitment being made right now to it as a product,” said Stuart Feldman, department group manager in IBM Research’s networked computing software department, in Hawthorne, NY.

A document on IBM Research’s Web site describes how Daisy might work. Each time a new piece of code is run for the first time, it is translated into simplified “RISC-like primitives,” parallelized, and then saved in a portion of main memory that can’t be seen by the old architecture. Subsequent executions of that same piece of code require no further translation.

Daisy also includes significantly faster compiler algorithms.

IBM’s Microelectronics Division, in Waltham, MA, can be reached at (914) 892-5092