News

BEA unveils Itanium 2 JVM

• By Lana Gates
• February 26, 2003

BEA Systems Inc. (http://www.bea.com), San Jose, Calif., found a new niche for its Java Virtual Machine (JVM) on the Intel Itanium 2 processor with the release of WebLogic JRockit 8.0. Although both Sun Microsystems (http://www.sun.com) and IBM (http://www.ibm.com) market JVMs for the Intel 32-bit architectures, BEA officials claim that JRockit 8.0 is the first standalone JVM optimized specifically for Intel Itanium.

BEA officials say Version 8.0 adds a performance boost, as well as more stability and maturity to Version 7.0, which was brought out last August. The upgrade also includes two new interfaces -- JVMDI for debugging and JVMPI for profiling -- that BEA officials say can make it easier for developers to debug and optimize application performance.

This latest release is the fastest JVM server-side today, claims Bob Griswold, vice president and general manager of Java Runtime Products Group, the group that was formed as a result of BEA's acquisition of Appeal Virtual Machines in Sweden and BEA's strategic partnership with Intel. ''All other virtual machines out there are based on Sun Hotspot,'' which was developed for a client-side environment to run an applet, maintained Griswold. He said the new JVM fills the gap left by Microsoft when the software giant left the Java market.

JRockit's server-side approach allows for longer running applications, better memory management and more network input/output traffic, Griswold said. It also makes it easier to develop and manage Java programs using JRockit. ''We turn a black box into an open box,'' Griswold explained. JRockit makes any industry standard hardware a viable deployment platform. ''This opens up a whole new opportunity for [users] to deploy on less-expensive and high-performing servers,'' he noted.

JRockit 8.0 is available for free download from BEA at http://commerce.bea.com/downloads/weblogic_jrockit.jsp. It is also available from Intel.