Book excerpt: Research on real-time Java technology has been prolific over the past decade, leading to a large number of corresponding hardware and software solutions, and frameworks for distributed and embedded real-time Java systems. This book is aimed primarily at researchers in real-time embedded systems, particularly those who wish to understand the current state of the art in using Java in this domain. Much of the work in real-time distributed, embedded and real-time Java has focused on the Real-time Specification for Java (RTSJ) as the underlying base technology, and consequently many of the Chapters in this book address issues with, or solve problems using, this framework. Describes innovative techniques in: scheduling, memory management, quality of service and communication systems supporting real-time Java applications; Includes coverage of multiprocessor embedded systems and parallel programming; Discusses state-of-the-art resource management for embedded systems, including Java’s real-time garbage collection and parallel collectors; Considers hardware support for the execution of Java programs including how programs can interact with functional accelerators; Includes coverage of Safety Critical Java for development of safety critical embedded systems.