Multiprocessing and portability for PDAs

The role of small devices in the emerging all-connected computer infrastructure is growing. So are the requirements that the application execution environments face. Portability, mobility, resource scarcity, and security concerns aggravated by often unknown sources of executed code combine together to create a challenging design and implementation task. It has been extensively argued and demonstrated that safe languages can solve some of these problems. In this paper, we focus on the multiprocessing aspect. We argue, in the context of the Java™ programming language, that multiprocessing execution environments based on safe languages for small devices can be built. However, in order to achieve lightweight and robust designs one has to consider a departure from replicating time-proven, traditional OS structure in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM™).