TFCompanion and Java Technology.
TFCompanion is build using Java technology, this means it is independent of the OS - you can use it on Windows,Lunix, Mac, UNIX, etc. The reason TFCompanion is system independent -it is executed in Java Virtual Machine (JVM), "a sandbox" inside your OS. JVM translates all the program calls to "native" OS calls. This intuitively sounds like Java program should be slower than a native application, and it was- in the early days of Java. Fortunately, it is not any more - especially for repetitive iteration or recursion type calculations (this is exactly the kind of calculation TFCompanion does). You may wonder why? A short answer is: native applications (e.g. C/C++) are using static compilers that optimize and translate a program in machine code. These compilers have no way of knowing how the program is used and what tasks are repeated, so they are doing overall global optimization. In contrast, latest JVM is doing part of optimization in a runtime, it is using the HotSpot technology that allows to detect repetitive tasks and cache the machine code instructions in memory. The result is lightning fast execution of complex repetitive calculations.
In our experience, Java and thin-film metrology software is a match made in heaven. It certainly gives performance competitive, if not superior, to C/C++ or VB implementations used in many commercial products. In fact, every commercial product we tried was noticeably slower than TFCompanion. TFCompanion is specially designed to take full advantage of Java and HotSpot technology- it uses precalculation and caching transparently to user, while other less CPU intensive tasks are performed. One other advantage of using Java is transparent scalability. This means that if you use multi-CPU system ( e.g. dual-core processor) JVM will automatically take full advantage of the additional CPUs. TFCompanion is designed for maximum scalability with full multithreading support and was tested on 4-way Solaris to have 90% scalability.TFCompanion is tested on Win32 (WindowsNT,2000, 95,98, Me,XP,Vista, Windows 7), Lunix (Fedora 4.x core), Solaris 3.2. However, it should work properly on all the OS that have JVM (Java Virtual Machine) available. In most cases Java ports (JVM/JRE) are available from OS vendors ( with notorious exception of Microsoft). Below is a list of Java ports for some popular OS.
Important! When downloading Java port please select JRE (Java Runtime Environment) you do NOT need JDK (Java Development Kit that is used to develop (compile) the program and is significantly larger than JRE) to run the application. Current version of TFCompanion requires at least JRE 1.4 that is available for different platforms. Some of the web sites for download are listed below:
- for MS Windows, Solaris and Lunix can be downloaded from Sun Microsystems: http://www.java.com
- for Apple OS can be downloaded from the AppleWebsite: http://developer.apple.com/java/
- for HP-UX can be downloaded from the HP website: http://www.hp.com/products1/unix/java/
- for OS/2 Warp 4 can be downloaded from the IBM website: http://service.boulder.ibm.com/cgi-bin/swchoice/doc/en_us/catalog.htm
This is by no means an exhaustive list of platforms that have JVMs ports. In most cases OS vendor would have a JVM port available. Please send us e-mail if you have a problem finding JVM or TFCompanion does not run on OS of your choice.