8-Bit Java

June 24, 2002

Who says microcontrollers can only be programmed in assembler or C? Parallax's Javelin Stamp is a multichip carrier with an 8-bit Ubicom microcontroller, surrounded by a 32-kbyte SRAM and 32-kbyte flash memory (...

William G. Wong

The Javelin implements a limited subset of Java. It lacks garbage collection and is restricted to integer arithmetic. But these limitations are manageable in its target market, controller-oriented applications.

Java isn't the only language to break the mold of assembler and C. Forth's SwiftX cross-development IDE brings Forth to a range of 8-bit microcontrollers. SwiftX features C portability and even handles multitasking and interrupts directly. The debugger also supports Motorola's background debug mode (BDM).

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.