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Oracle Formally Proposes That Java Adopt Ahead-of-Time Compilation (infoworld.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes InfoWorld:
Java applications will get faster startup times thanks to a formal proposal to include ahead-of-time compilation in the platform. The draft Java Development Kit proposal, authored by Vladimir Kozlov, principal technical staff member at Oracle, is targeted for inclusion in Java 9, which is expected to be available next summer. "We would love to see this make it into JDK 9, but that will of course depend on the outcome of the OpenJDK process for this JDK Enhancement Proposal," said Georges Saab, vice president of software development in the Java platform group at Oracle, on Thursday. Ahead-of-time compilation has been a stated goal for Java 9 to address the issue of slow startup...
The proposal summary notes that Java classes would be compiled to native code prior to launching the virtual machine. The ultimate goal is to improve the startup time of small or large Java applications while having "at most" a limited impact on peak performance and minimizing changes to the user workflow.
Tests indicates some applications perform better while some actually perform worse, so it's being proposed as an opt-in feature where dissatisfied users "can just rebuild a new JDK without ahead-of-time libraries."
The proposal summary notes that Java classes would be compiled to native code prior to launching the virtual machine. The ultimate goal is to improve the startup time of small or large Java applications while having "at most" a limited impact on peak performance and minimizing changes to the user workflow.
Tests indicates some applications perform better while some actually perform worse, so it's being proposed as an opt-in feature where dissatisfied users "can just rebuild a new JDK without ahead-of-time libraries."
The proposal summary notes that Java classes would be compiled to native code prior to launching the virtual machine.
If it's all compiled to native code ahead of starting the JVM, what do you need the JVM for? Their use of "native code" here is not what we usually mean. It's just "ahead-of-time" compiled libraries, same as the Android ART.
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AOT makes sense for certain application. Also AOT doesn't mean AOT only. If you want to use it with a tracing JIT I see no reason why these technologies are incompatible.
The problem I have with Java is that with some java programs it takes less time for an equivalent C program to compile and run than an that java program to do all of its dynamic linking and finally run. You don't have to do AOT, but all those string compares during loading really slows things down. Each symbol has to be looked up and compared.
With native libraries often times shared libraries are already in memory. The libraries are simply mapped into a processes address space. In java land each time you load a library it takes up its own space and that overhead is not shared by multiple processes. It seems silly that these processes can't share their compilation efforts.
We have a ways to go with runtimes. The first step is oracle admitting they are the problem.