As a response to the increasing size and complexity of hard real-time software, a significant portion of the real-time community is likely to adopt the solutions offered by the Java platform. Specialized Java processors are particularly important in such environments, not just for easing the development process but also for providing safe guarantees that the system will perform as designed.
In anticipation of this trend, the Volta[1] project offers a suite of tools for worst-case execution time analysis in Java microprocessors. It is fully open-source (available under the GNU Public License) and implemented in Java. Still a work-in-progress, it is intended as a platform for research and experimentation in real-time (especially hard real-time) computing.
The Volta suite includes Cascade, a control flow analyzer; Clepsydra, a WCET analyzer; Canteen, a set of time-predictable collection classes; Cascade and Clepsydra plugins for the jEdit text editor; and a Java compiler modified to support WCET annotations.
To install and use the Volta tools, the following components are required:
Note that even if Java 1.6 is installed, Ant may be using some other version. Use ant -diagnostics to verify the java.version property for which Ant is configured.