A Preview of Things to Come

Performance Enhancements

• Solaris Native Thread Support
  In a multi-processor environment, the Solaris kernel can schedule native threads on the parallel processors for increased performance. The native threads VM integrates better with native code than the default green threads VM. The VM can avoid some inefficient remapping of I/O system calls that are otherwise necessary.

• Reduced Memory Usage for Loaded Classes
  Constant strings are shared among different classes, resulting in reduced memory consumption for Java applications.

• Faster Memory Allocation and Garbage Collection
  The thread-local heap cache eliminates the need of locking for the majority of heap allocations. Memory allocation speed is drastically increased. Garbage collection pauses are shorter. The garbage collector no longer excessively consumes the C stack.

• Monitor Speedups
  The thread-local monitor cache enables synchronized methods to run closer to the speed of normal methods.

• Native Library JNI Port
  Native libraries supporting core Java classes (e.g., AWT) have been rewritten using the Java Native Interface (JNI). The resulting code is more efficient and can run unmodified on different Java Virtual Machines.

• Just In Time (JIT) Compilers
  JIT compilers are being included with the JDK. The Solaris JIT compiler is available with Beta1. The Win32 JIT compiler will be available with the final release.

A Preview of Things to Come