Using Java on Wearable Devices featuring an Hybrid Architecture.

Oracle JavaOne 2014 - September 30 2014
Using Java on Wearable Devices
Featuring a Hybrid Architecture
Presenters:
Nicola La Gloria - Kynetics
Aaron Oki Moore - Revolution Robotics

Who we are:
■ Nicola La Gloria, Kynetics, CEO
nicola.lagloria@kynetics.com
■ Aaron Oki Moore, Revolution Robotics Inc., President
aaron@revoinc.com
Key Contributors
■ Diego Rondini (Kynetics)
■ Jacob Postman (Revo)
■ Otavio Salvador (OS System, CEO and i.MX6 Yocto maintainer)
■ Ray Anderson (Revo)

Agenda
■ Introduction
■ What is Wearable Computing
■ Wearables in IoT
■ Design Challenges of Wearables
■ Hybrid Design Architecture
■ Wearable Reference Platform (WaRP)
■ Java on Hybrid Design Architecture
■ Operating System
■ Demo / Q & A

What is Wearable Computing
■ A Wearable Computer is a body mounted connected
platform that enhance the user experience and activity.
■ Wearables does not mean smartwatch! Although they are
dominant today.
■ Defining features of Wearables are:
■ Form Factor Miniaturization
■ Low Power
■ Connectivity
■ Multiple sensors

How we got here...

Examples of Wearable Computers

Wearables in IoT devices
■ Wearables among one of the fastest growing segments in
IoT.
■ ~20M devices in the market to date
■ Estimated worth $50B within the next three years
■ Characterizing feature for modern wearables: Connectivity
■ Edge Device
Two key IoT characterizations: Data Generators, Data Consumer:
■ Wearables are prevalent as sensors (medical/fitness) which
generate data pushed to the cloud.
■ Devices receive data in the form of news, messages, events,
etc to display to the user (can also be used for configuration).

Design Challenges of Wearables
■ Form Factor - small, lightweight, 1/5th the size of
smartphones
■ Battery Life due to limited capacity
■ Communication and Connectivity
Design Consideration:
■ Markets: Medical, Health & Fitness, Infotainment
■ MCU vs AP
■ Performance / Application Capabilities
■ Expandability (As both a hardware and software platform)
■ Connectivity Options - Wifi, BT

Hybrid Design Architecture
Wearable Devices today are divided into two main categories:
■ CPU driven devices:
■ Generally they present a rich user experience featuring a
full operating system
■ I’m Watch
■ Samsung Gear
■ Moto 360
■ Micro Controller driven devices:
■ Generally they feature a longer battery life but poor UI
■ Nike Fuel Band
■ Fit-bit
■ Peeble Watch
■ My Basis

What is Hybrid Design?
■ The Hybrid Architecture has been introduced into a wearable
reference design by Revo and Kynetics in 2012 as a solution
to increase the battery life of a wearable computer.
■ Addresses/Focuses on:
■ Ease/flexibility of design implementation
■ Address key design challenges of wearables
■ Scale to a variety of applications
■ Separate hardware/software domains
■ Reliability via MCU

Fusion between APP and MCU through a design architecture
that partitions the domain between Hardware and Software.
Mainboard (Application Processor Board)
■ High performance core with high complexity
■ Same mainboard for all applications
Daughter Board (Application Specific MCU board)
■ Application specific components and sensor platform
■ Different daughter boards for different applications

Mainboard component selection criteria:
■ Components that are common across application domains
■ Move/Separate by complexity domain to reduce cost and
scale of implementation challenges.

Display Mainboard Battery Daughter board

Implementation example: WaRP

Wearable Reference Platform (WaRP)
Purpose:
Develop a wearable reference platform to cover a wide range of
applications. Focus on improving design cycle (ease, speed) for
new wearable devices, and to substantially reduce the cost of
product development. Developed with production /
manufacturing in mind (Commercializable).

Hardware Details:
■ Based on Freescale i.MX6SL (Solo) - 1.0 Ghz
■ 512MB LP-DDR2 Mobile Memory, 4GB eMMC Flash Storage
■ USB OTG, Motion Processor, PMIC, WIFI + BT, B2B Expansion
■ PCB: 10 Layer HDI (High Density Interconect), Host to 220 Components
■ Dimensions: 16mm W x 38mm L x 3.4mm Thin (Board Area < 1
sq-in)

Totally Open Source & Open Hardware

Java on Hybrid Design Architecture
■ Java SE Embedded runs on Application (requires OS and device level IO such as
UART requires additional third party libraries such as rxtx or Java DIO ).
■ Java ME 8 opens the doors for running Java at the MCU level.
Freescale
FRDM-K64F

Daughter Card Application Interface

System Architecture: overview
JVM
Hardware
Bootloader
Yocto Linux
Java Libraries and Frameworks
UI Applications
Linux Kernel
Display Manager
UI toolkits
Java Bindings

Operating System
■ GNU/Linux to run Oracle JVM is needed
■ GPU hardware support (Vivante GC320, 2D Engine for WaRP)
■ Architecture dependent code compilation (native libraries, JNI)):
■ OS featuring a toolchain (SDK) and headers. (Yocto SDK for i.mx6 SL)
■ a cross-compiling environment to compile the native code we need
(OS, libs, JNI). Yocto pocky toolchain.
■ Windowing system selection:
■ X11
■ Wayland
■ Kernel trade off for i.MX Solo Light:
■ Linux kernel 3.0.35 (only X11, Yocto Dora)
■ Linux kernel 3.10.17 (X11/Wayland, Yocto Daisy)
■ Linux kernel 3.15.x (last development release)

Appliations
JVM
Display Manager
Kernel Space (KMS)
Drivers
GPU ModulesNative
Appliations
JVM
Kernel Space (KMS)
Drivers
“Embedded”
GPU Support
Native
Two approaches to GPU support
Display Manager

What is Wayland?
■ Wayland is intended as a simpler replacement for X, easier to develop
and maintain.
■ Wayland is a protocol for a compositor to talk to its clients as well as a C
library implementation of that protocol.
■ Part of the Wayland project is also the Weston reference implementation
of a Wayland compositor.
■ The Weston compositor is a minimal and fast compositor and is suitable
for many embedded and mobile use cases.
■ Most of the complexity that the X server used to handle is now available
in the kernel or self contained libraries (KMS, evdev, mesa, fontconfig,
freetype, cairo, Qt, etc). In general, the X server is now just a middle-man
that introduces an extra step between applications and the compositor
and an extra step between the compositor and the hardware.

X11 vs Wayland
images from (http://wayland.freedesktop.org/architecture.html)

Display Management and UI Toolkits.
It’s very important to have lightweed and performant Display
Managers (DM) and UI Toolkits (UIT) to provide the desired User
experience.
■ DM Alternatives:
■ X11
■ Wayland
■ Hybrid (XWayland, to support X11 apps on Wayland)
■ UIT Alternatives for WaRP (only 2D acceleration):
■ AWT (no 3D accelerated rendering)/Swing
■ GTK3, SWT
■ Possible bindings (2D) today are:
■ X11 (AWT,SWING,JAVA FX, SWT)
■ Wayland (GTK3, SWT)

Current Issues on Wayland with Java
The problem: we have a FSL Solo Light based platform (only 2D Vivante GPU) we want
to display Java Graphics on Wayland backend (more performant on embedded
devices).
■ AWT/Java FX is not supported
■ https://community.oracle.com/thread/2491140
■ Someone is claiming that Eclipse is working under Wayland
■ http://blog.vogella.com/2014/08/18/eclipse-now-runs-on-wayland/
■ The trick is that Eclipse works with X11 on behalf, not in a pure Wayland
environment (XWayland required or booth present in the system)
■ Why?: SWT: dependents on GTKPlug/GTKSocket
References:
■ http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/eclipse.org/4.4.0/org.ecl
ipse.swt.gtk.linux/x86_64/3.103.0/org/eclipse/swt/internal/gtk/OS.java#1622
■ https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=721224#c1

State of the art: what we have today.
It’s very important to have lightweed and performant Display
Managers (DM) and UI Toolkits (UIT) to provide the desired User
experience.
■ DM Alternatives:
■ X11
■ Wayland
■ Hybrid (XWayland, to support X11 apps on Wayland)
■ UIT Alternatives for WaRP (only 2D acceleration):
■ AWT (no 3D accelerated rendering)/Swing
■ GTK3, SWT
■ Possible bindings (2D) today are:
■ X11 (AWT,SWING,JAVA FX, SWT)
■ Wayland (GTK3, SWT)

Q & A

Thank you!
A special thanks to:
■ James Allen (Oracle)
■ Robert Thompson (Freescale)
■ Eric Nelson (Boundary Devices)
■ David Clack (Sun Microsystems)
■ All the Developers Communities (Yocto, Java, FSL)

Using Java on Wearable Devices featuring an Hybrid Architecture.

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