I have recently learned some basic Java and was thinking of seeing if I can use these new skills for an embedded computing project. I have been looking around but I can’t seem to be able to find any microcontrollers that are capable of running Java. Does such a thing even exist?
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Answer
Because of Java virtual machine architecture, you need considerable resources just to run the JVM. The path of least resistance to getting an JVM is probably to run an OS on the target that already supports it such as Linux, but that itself requires relatively huge resources.
There are a few stand-alone JVMs that either work bare-metal or integrate with and embedded RTOS for threading support. I compiled a list a while ago in an answer to a similar question, but some of the links are now out of date.
Running Java on an embedded system will certainly hit performance, and is probably not suited to hard real-time applications without a great deal of care.