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Eclipse Now Runs On Jikes Research Virtual Machine

Posted by timothy on from the joiks dept.

jscribner writes "IBM reached another key milestone in open source: Eclipse, a completely open source platform, now runs on the Jikes Research Virtual Machine (RVM) improving its teaching/research potential because it provides the community with a significant open source Java benchmark that runs on top of a flexible open testbed (Jikes RVM). The testbed runs on Linux and uses the GNU Classpath implementation of Java libraries (read: complete open source solution). Although Jikes RVM was developed by IBM researchers at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, it was donated to the community in October 2001 and now has a steering committee and core team that include both IBMers and other university researchers."

8 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. What makes this VM different is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    - it's 99% written in Java itself (not C).
    - it uses a modified reference counting scheme for garbage collection.

  2. A selection of memory managers by saugart · · Score: 5, Informative
    Even better than just having a modified reference counting scheme, it has a choice of memory managers you can plug in. You can write your own, too. The API for it is JMTk (the Java Memory management Toolkit).

    There's more info on the memory management system in the Jikes RVM user's guide.

    The memory managers supported include:

    • SemiSpace (copying),
    • MarkSweep (non-copying),
    • CopyMS (non-generational copy/mark-sweep hybrid)
    • GenCopy (classic copying generational),
    • GenMS (generational with mark-sweep mature space), or
    • RefCount (a reference counting collector with non-concurrent cycle collection)
    • NoGC (allocation only, no garbage collection)
  3. Re:well, this is interesting by Amomynos+Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    > Now if they can just get x86 binaries to run on my P4, we'll be set!

    Hmm, you must be using Windows:

    Move the mousepointer to the lower left corner and click the button saying Start. From the opening menu select "Run...", type the name of a program to the appearing window and press Ok. Here is a complete list of the executables you can run:

    winmine.exe
    sol.exe
    pinball.exe
    freecell.exe

  4. Eclipse without VM - gcj news last month by okock · · Score: 3, Interesting

    More options came in August, when the gcj team announced to compile/run eclipse natively without a vm and much better startup time.

    Olaf

  5. Re:well, this is interesting by saugart · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > > Now if they can just get x86 binaries to run on my P4, we'll be set! > Hmm, you must be using Windows: I assume by P4 the author meant "Power 4", the name Apple uses to describe a generation of PowerPC processors.

  6. Re:why is this great by jkauzlar · · Score: 2, Informative
    Jikes is reportedly faster than Sun's JVM and may have better memory management. Many have said they were disappointed with their application's performance, but when they ran it under Jikes, it was like a breath of fresh air. I've heard no portability advantages since Sun does a good job developing for just about every popularly used OS. Open source code could be ported anywhere there's a compiler, of course.

    My hope is that an open source solution would allow for further experimentation with the JIT compiler (compiling byte code to native code on the fly) could actually result in faster JVM code than C code (disregarding load times of course). Experimenters may also find tricks to speed up and improve the GUI as well, which Java seriously needs.

  7. Re:IBM PR by daveho · · Score: 3, Insightful
    It's just yet another IBM PR fluff piece.
    I disagree. IBM has put a huge amount of time and resources into free software that lots of people use: Eclipse, Linux, etc. The effort to get Eclipse to work on Jikes RVM gives users a world-class Java IDE which is entirely based on open source software. One of the most interesting things about Eclipse on Jikes RVM is that it does not require any changes to Eclipse; the porting effort consistent entirely of fixing bugs and implementing missing functionality in Jikes RVM and its libraries.

    Disclaimer: As an intern at IBM, I was one of the people involved in the effort to get Eclipse to run on Jikes RVM. I don't work for them at the moment.
  8. Re:why is this great by dhk42 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The jikes that you "have unknowingly acually used" was most likely just the compiler (which has been available for ages and is excellent).

    It probably was not the virtual machine described here.