Sun Microelectronics Inc will be talking up its picoJava I core at next week’s Microprocessor Forum, offering a peek inside what until now has been a black box and offering those benchmarks in an attempt to attract more wins for the design (CI No 3,019). The benchmarks use Javac, the compiler from Sun’s Java Developers Kit, and 3,500-line ray-tracer Java program, and pitch an emulated picoJava I core-based processor running native Java code against Windows95 Pentium- and 80486-based machines running a Symantec Corp Cafe just-in-time compiler and a Sun Java Developers Kit interpreter. Scaling all system times to 100MHz, Sun claims picoJava is 15 to 20 times faster than a 80486 running an interpreter, and five times quicker than a Pentium running a just-in-time compiler. But as they are going to appear in phones, Network Computers and similar appliances, it is unlikely that chips using picoJava will be competing with conventional iAPX-86 systems – although Nokia Oy uses an iAPX-86-compatible processor in the Nokia 9000 cellular computer. Sun said it will benchmark against other architectures, such as a StrongARM-powered device running Java, when it can get hold of them. The picoJava core description will be available to be implemented in silicon from the first quarter of next year. Sun said it may develop other picoJava cores, such as a smaller one for control devices, or a super-charged version supporting additional multimedia and graphics. It said it would have products ready using its microJava chip implementation of picoJava by Christmas 1997, though it says competitors could get to market sooner. It’s still unclear from where a complete ASIC program to support the picoJava will come.
