NEW ORLEANS, La. — Startup Java OS supplier SavaJe Technology received a vote of confidence from the investment community this week when it announced at the CTIA Wireless 2003 conference here that it raised an additional $17.5 million in a series B funding that included Vodafone Ventures and Orange Ventures, the investment arms of two of the largest European operators.
While others in the sector are striving to make Java an embedded solution that links in with existing operating systems, SavaJe is working on a Java OS that will replace Symbian, Windows and others in mobile designs.
In a typical design, which features an embedded Java accelerator working with an OS like Symbian, developers can write Java programs to perform on mobile phones. But, to provide performance, designers need to program at the C or C++ level, said Bob Gilkes, chair and CEO of SavaJe. "Instantly you have a split domain."
Through its OS offering, SavaJe is trying to provide unification back to the mobile programming world. By building a unified Java OS, SavaJe is delivering a seamless OS that delivers a single programming model for developers, Gilkes said.
SavaJe's core OS platform includes a low-level kernel, Java virtual machines, codec, engines and Java libraries. The multi-threaded, multi-task kernel provides memory management, resource locking, thread control, scheduling and a device driver interface. The JVM is integrated with the kernel, running as a kernel resource
The OS platform is optimized for the ARM processor family. Specifically, SavaJe has made the OS compatible with ARM9, XScale and ARM926EJ processor architectures, which are popular options for mobile handset and PDA designs.
By adding another $17.5 million, SavaJe has raised a total of $29.5 million to date. Other investors in the company include RRE Ventures, New Venture Partners and Ridgewood Capital.
