JVM Architecture

This paper describes the design, implementation, and experimental evaluation of a modular and extensible Java Virtual Machine (JVM) infrastructure, called Jupiter. The infrastructure is intended to serve as a vehicle for our research on scalable JVM architectures for a 128-processor cluster of PC workstations, with support for shared memory in software. Jupiter is constructed, using a building block architecture, out of many modules with small, simple interfaces. This flexible structure, similar to UNIX shells that build complex command pipelines out of discrete programs, allows the rapid prototyping of our research ideas by confining changes in JVM design to a small number of modules. In spite of this flexibility, Jupiter delivers good performance. Experimental evaluation of the current implementation of Jupiter using the SPECjvm98 benchmarks shows that it is on average 2.65 times faster than Kaffe and 2.20 slower than the Sun Microsystems JDK (interpreter versions only). By providing a flexible JVM infrastructure that delivers competitive performance, we believe we have developed a framework that supports further research into JVM scalability.