Book excerpt: Annotation Build powerful real-time Java "TM" TM platform aplications! -- The complete reference to the Real Time Specification for Java (RTSJ) for every Java developer who wants to master real-time programming. -- Covers practical real-time development considerations, scheduling theory, garbage collection, rate monotonic analysis, and other key issues. -- Closures, thread.interrupt, asynchronous events, timers, CT, physical and "immortal" memory, program structure, distributed RT applications, exceptions, and more. Real-time programming is critical to the development of a wide range of consumer, industrial, system, and military devices. Using the new Real-Time Specification for Java (RTSJ), developers can create, verify, analyze, execute and manage Java code that ensures the correctness, timeliness, and execution predictability that are essential to real-time programming. This book, written by one of RTSJ's creators, offers a practical introduction to real-time programming for every Java developer -- even those with no real-time experience at all. Replete with example code, this book gives any Java developer the skills and expertise to build powerful real-time applications. Peter Dibble begins with an overview of the key issues associated with Java real-time development. He covers garbage collection, priority scheduling and deadline scheduling in real-time environments; then introduces rate monotonic analysis, a powerful set of techniques for analyzing timing be