Open source Java moving to Linux, AIX on PowerPC (IT World Canada) [LWN.net]

IT World Canada is reporting that a team from IBM and SAP is working to bring support for PowerPC processors to OpenJDK, on Linux and on IBM's AIX. "'This reference implementation can then be used by IBM and SAP to provide their commercially licensed Java offerings in much the same way in which Oracle offers its Oracle JDK product based on OpenJDK,' [Volker] Simonis said. 'The big advantage for the open source community is that everybody (i.e. Linux distributors like Debian, Red Hat, or Ubuntu) will be able to build and provide free and state-of-the-art versions of Java based on the new OpenJDK platform ports. And of course they are highly welcome to engage in the project as well.'" OpenJDK would replace IBM's proprietary JDK as the leading Java implementation on PowerPC. The project was first proposed May 7 on the OpenJDK discussion list.

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Open source Java moving to Linux, AIX on PowerPC (IT World Canada)

Posted May 12, 2012 2:04 UTC (Sat) by yarikoptic (subscriber, #36795) [Link]

I guess I would need to read this one on a sober head to figure out what is the news since debian package search suggests that it had been ported/supported for eternity

Package openjdk-6-jdk
    lenny (oldstable) (devel): OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK)
    6b18-1.8.10-0~lenny2: amd64 armel i386 mips mipsel powerpc s390 sparc
    6b11-9.1: alpha ia64
    squeeze (stable) (devel): OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK)
    6b18-1.8.13-0+squeeze1 [security]: amd64 armel i386 ia64 mips mipsel powerpc s390 sparc
    wheezy (testing) (java): OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK)
    6b24-1.11.1-3: amd64 armel armhf i386 ia64 mips mipsel powerpc s390 s390x sparc
    sid (unstable) (java): OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK)
    6b24-1.11.1-6: amd64 armel armhf i386 ia64 mips mipsel powerpc s390 s390x sparc
    6b24-1.11.1-3 [debports]: alpha sh4
    6b24~pre2-1 [debports]: powerpcspe

Open source Java moving to Linux, AIX on PowerPC (IT World Canada)

Posted May 12, 2012 6:40 UTC (Sat) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]

It reads "free and state-of-the-art versions of Java, though OpenJDK has traditionally provided what seemed more like a PoC.

It's been a lot slower than the IBM JIT; I presume it still does not quite match its performance, despite it should have improved with http://openjdk.java.net/projects/zero/

Open source Java moving to Linux, AIX on PowerPC (IT World Canada)

Posted May 12, 2012 6:58 UTC (Sat) by Jonno (subscriber, #49613) [Link]

An interpreter has always been available, but the Hotspot JIT has only been available on x86_{32,64} and sparc.

Open source Java moving to Linux, AIX on PowerPC (IT World Canada)

Posted May 12, 2012 12:47 UTC (Sat) by pflugstad (subscriber, #224) [Link]

Sun/Oracle's Java Embedded (based on HotSpot) has been available for ARM and PowerPC for quite a while now:

<http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/embedded/downloads...>

Unfortunately, it is proprietary.

Last time I used the ARM version of Zero/Shark, about a year and a half ago, it was not stable and did not perform very well. Things have undoubtedly gotten better since then, but compared to Sun's offering, it wasn't even close.

There are several other commercial JVM's available for PowerPC as well.

The way I read this article, this is IBM/SAP basically offering to provide parts of their JVM for PowerPC.

JITed Java on PowerPC

Posted May 14, 2012 11:39 UTC (Mon) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

I believe that you can run Java code on PowerPC using IKVM, the Java virtual machine for Mono. The Mono port to PowerPC includes a just-in-time compiler.

JITed Java on PowerPC

Posted May 14, 2012 16:01 UTC (Mon) by xxiao (subscriber, #9631) [Link]

jamvm seems usable for embedded powerpc

Open source Java moving to Linux, AIX on PowerPC (IT World Canada)

Posted May 14, 2012 21:12 UTC (Mon) by phiggins (subscriber, #5605) [Link]

I am excited by the possibility of having a larger selection of JVMs on AIX. I was bitten by having no alternative when issues arose with the one and only AIX JVM. Those were eventually resolved, but months went by and the fix was to upgrade to a new major version of the JVM.

It is comforting to know that there are several to choose from when using Linux on x86. My fear here is IBM will stop supporting the original AIX JVM so that now OpenJDK will be the only choice.