10 May 2008

Java to get better runtime optimisations

JavaOne: AMD Keynote | Javalobby
Two features were given the spotlight to show how “Java is moving closer to the bare metal as it evolves”. By that AMD means the JVM will be using an increasing number of instruction sets and features for tuning purposes going forward and we could ultimately see the JVM being run directly on a hypervisor, sans operating system. The features are:

* Light-weight profiling (LWP): Designed to improve software parallelism through new hardware features in future versions of AMD processors. It will allow technologies like Java to more easily benefit from the multi-core processors that are now being designed and deployed.

* Advanced Synchronization Facility (ASF): Created to increase concurrency performance and introduces hardware read barriers to help with Garbage Collection.