BEA releases ‘world’s fastest’ JVM
JRockit 7.0 optimized for Intel architecture
September 9, 2002 — BEA Systems has released JRockit 7.0 for Intel hardware, which one company official termed the “world’s fastest” JVM.
Version 7.0 focuses on manageability, performance, and support for Intel’s 32- and 64-bit architectures, although the 64-bit JVM is not yet available, said Bob Griswold, vice president and general manager of the Java runtime products group at BEA, in San Jose, Calif.
“We’ve been working with Intel closely for the past year on optimizing this JVM for the Intel architecture, so what you’ll see with JRockit 7.0 is the world’s fastest JVM on the Intel architecture. It’s actually the world’s fastest JVM on any architecture, period,” Griswold said.
The company will release benchmarks on the new version, which Griswold said is twice as fast as the current release of JRockit, Version 3.1.5.
JRockit 7.0 will be available free of charge, but the company hopes to leverage it to boost sales of its WebLogic Server application server platform, although the JVM will function with other application servers as well, Griswold said.
“JRockit is optimized and tuned with WebLogic in mind, but you can run any Java application on it,” he said.
Version 7.0 features a new management console that provides details of what is going on inside the server and in the hardware itself. “It actually goes all the way down to the metal,” with details such as memory usage, Griswold said.
The initial product will support Intel 32-bit processors, but BEA will release 64-bit versions when Red Hat and Microsoft ship 64-bit operating systems for Intel, Griswold said.
A technology preview of JRockit for Red Hat Advanced Server with 64-bit functionality is anticipated in a couple of months. General releases of 64-bit JRockit implementations are expected in early 2003.
BEA acquired the JRockit technology when it purchased Appeal Virtual Machines, a Swedish-based company, in February.
