Azul turbocharges its Java computing appliance
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The processors, which act as add-on horsepower for a traditional server and offload Java applications, now include up to 16 chips, with 768 cores.
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Linux programmer Rusty Russell offers software that could unify some virtualization programming chores.
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Sun is working on technology to make it easier to run different languages on the Java Virtual Machine. Called the Da Vinci Machine, the project is being described by Sun as "a multi-language renaissance for the Java Virtual Machine architecture." The project features prototype JVM extensions to run non-Java languages efficiently as well as architectural support.Although many languages besides Java have been implemented on the JVM, including Ruby, the intent is to make the JVM more compatible with other languages, said Charles Nutter, core developer of JRuby, which is a version of Ruby to run on the JVM. "For the most part, almost every language that's more than five years old has some kind of implementation on the JVM," he said. ?The JVM allows programs using it to run on any platform supporting the JVM; it provides hardware and OS independence. Benefits like flexible online code loading and online garbage collection, in which objects are moved out of the way automatically rather than having to be saved manually, are featured.Da Vinci Machine is intended to overcome obstacles like mismatches between a source language's design patterns and JVM capabilities. Because the JVM was designed for Java and Java favors some design patterns over others, implementers can find themselves dealing with these mismatches, Sun said."Specifically, the JVM was originally for Java, and many other languages have features unlike what Java provides. We need to find ways to support those features," said Nutter.Some pain points to running new languages on the JVM include limitations on calling sequences and control stack management, finite inheritance, and scaling problems when generating classes.Nutter pointed out that Java, in being a statically typed language, differs from scripting languages like Ruby, which are dynamically typed. Thus, Java gives the JVM more clues about what code is going to be executed. Ways need to be found to let the JVM make the correct call for these languages, he said. In JRuby, this obstacle is addressed via a piece of code to inspect target operations.Capabilities of Da Vinci Machine are planned for inclusion in the upcoming JDK (Java SE Development Kit) 7, which is based on Java Platform, Standard Edition 7. Sun could not provide a release date for JDK 7. It is not known how many Da Vinci features might actually get into JDK 7, Nutter said.Da Vinci represents an experimental branch, or even a fork, of the JVM, said Nutter. He cautioned that fork in this case is not meant to carry the same negative connotations associated with forking of a platform.Java developers questioned liked the idea of Da Vinci Machine."[Da Vinci Machine] sounds like something I was thinking was going to happen and should have happened," said Daniel Hinojosa, an independent Java developer and a founder of the Albuquerque Java Users Group. "I think there's going to be a race between Java and the Microsoft [CLR (Common Language Runtime)]." The CLR has been likened to a virtual machine supporting multiple languages. "I think Java's a great language, but I think people like to program differently, whether it's a functional language or a scripting language," he said. Hinojosa said has been running JRuby, Groovy, and Java on the JVM.Developer Alex Miller, tech lead at Java clustering technology vendor Terracotta, also agreed with the Da Vinci Machine effort."There are lots of people writing and running dynamic languages on the JVM these days, and there are certain things that are complicated or obscure with the use of [dynamic] languages," Miller said.A lot of dynamic languages differ from Java in that they leverage functions rather than objects, Miller said. Making them work on the JVM requires extra work, he said.Sun's JRuby project, meanwhile, is getting an upgrade. Version 1.1, due within a month, features a full compiler to greatly improve performance, Nutter said.
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BEA gets virtualization religion, builds edition of Java virtual machine that runs on VMware's hypervisor.
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Open-source software maker releases big update to Java-based application server program.
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With an eye toward both consumer and enterprise needs, Sun Microsystems is reworking the plug-in architecture of Java in an upcoming update to Java Platform Standard Edition (SE) 6, company officials said Wednesday evening.Overall, Sun officials at a briefing in San Francisco stressed the company's new emphasis on not just the enterprise space but consumer systems as well, with the company extending Java and rich experiences to various devices.With the plug-in platform, a ground-up rewrite is under way, said Ken Russell, from the Java SE deployment team. "This will change how your poker game in [a] Web browser is run as well as your corporate app," Russell said.The new architecture is planned for inclusion in the upcoming beta of what is now being referred to as Java SE 6 Update N, due in December."Really, the defining feature of it is that it runs the applets in a separate process than the Web browser," Russell said.Features of the plug-in plan include improved scripting support and reliability. More powerful applications can be supported than in the past. Users will be able to tune an applet to run in a particular version of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE); this will enable developers to target one JRE without having to change the behavior of any other applet. Testing also will be simplified.In addition, better backing will be offered for Windows Vista, including capabilities for signed applets. Support will be offered for Internet Explorer 6 and 7 browsers as well as for Firefox 3 alpha builds and the Firefox 2 browser. Platforms capable of running the plug-in include Solaris, Windows and Linux.Current plans call for the plug-in technology to be turned on via a switch in the Java control panel.Sun also delved into other features planned for Java SE 6 Update N."Update N is about fixing the consumer experience," with a more solid browser plug-in experience and a better installation experience, said Chet Haase, Java SE client architect. Sun also wants to better enable Java for rich Internet applications.A faster startup for Java is also planned. This is important in the Web ad and lightweight game space, Haase said. Also planned is inclusion of technology from a project called Quickstarter, which preloads disk cache to bolster performance of lightweight applications. Faster graphics is planned as well, as is Nimbus, which provides a new look and feel for Java Swing client systems.Haase also noted Sun's plan for the Java Kernel, which enables downloading just the parts of Java that are needed to run an application. While that application is running, the rest of the platform is downloaded.James Gosling, chief technology officer for the Sun client software group, reviewed plans for JavaFX, which is Sun's platform for building rich, consistent user experiences for a wide variety of devices and systems."JavaFX really is a marketing term that is sort of an umbrella for a set of activities," Gosling said. The platform covers consumer-facing technologies and features a services layer based on Java and a database, a presentation layer with HTTPD, and an edge device component, covering desktops to phones to TVs."This edge part of the universe -- this is what JavaFX is all about," said Gosling.Featured in JavaFX is JavaFX Mobile, which is a software stack for mobile phones; Java SE 6 Update N, also known as the consumer JRE; the JavaFX Script scripting language, and JavaFX designer and developer tools."[JavaFX Script is] a scripting language sort of in the sense of PHP [Hypertext Preprocessor] and Python and all the rest of them. But while those are focused at generating HTML from the presentation layer outward, JavaFX Script is really all about rich user interactions," Gosling said.
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Sun Microsystems has added nVidia Quadro graphics technology to the Java Workstations it detailed last month. The vendor has included the technology in its W1100z and W2100z models, which are based on AMD
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SableVM is a robust, extremely portable, efficient, and specifications-compliant Java Virtual Machine that aims to be easy to maintain and to extend. It features a state-of-the-art and efficient interpreter engine. Its source code is very accessible and easy to understand. It also has many robustness features that have been the object of careful design.     SableVM is a clean-room implementation of the publicly available specifications.    In this version, we added an experimental generational garbage collector, we imported a new GNU Classpath snapshot, we added handling of Jar/Zip files on boot classpath, we added user-friendly failure messages for bootstrap problems, we added added a profiling switch, we made sablevm-classpath install its files in standard locations, we made jikes and gcc be less verbose by default, and we made several important bugfixes and improvements.  You can download the SableVM from: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5523&release_id=281502
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Ziff Davis - Adlink releases an ETX form-factor single-board computer with embedded Linux support for Intel Celeron and Pentium processors
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A new mobile Linux platform from Azingo joins an increasingly crowded market of Linux phone software.
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(InfoWorld) - Eyeing organizations that run business-critical Web applications on the PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) platform, Zend Technologies will offer its Zend Platform 3.0 PHP application server on Monday. Zend Platform bolsters deployments of commercial applications on PHP, Mark de Visser, Zend chief marketing officer, said. New in this version is its availability in three different editions. Versions are offered for smaller organizations, for integrating with Java, and for enterprise-level users. Zend Platform features such capabilities as message-queuing, de Visser said. Virtually all Fortune 500 companies have PHP initiatives, he said. "It's a sizable market opportunity for us," he said. Zend Platform fills a niche for enterprise-level PHP users, Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst at RedMonk, said. The product provides performance, caching, and reliability, he said. "It brings many of the same benefits that [Java] application servers bring to the Java world to the PHP world," O'Grady said. PHP has gotten the nod over Java in some installations because it offers developer productivity and is suitable for SOA, de Visser said. "The scripting languages just lend themselves [to] that," he said. The three specific editions of Zend Platform include: * The PS release, which loosely stands for performance server. Geared toward SMBs, it offers performance improvements and management functions. Capabilities include PHP intelligence to monitor business applications, and code acceleration and dynamic content caching to boost performance. Other features include output compression to reduce bandwidth for better responsiveness, and simplified configuration management. * IS, for integration server, is geared to organizations with application and infrastructure needs. Integration is provided with Java and SNMP infrastructure. Reporting capabilities also are included. A Java bridge interacts with Java objects or J2EE services. Also highlighted is integration with Eclipse Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools for reporting. * ES, for enterprise server, for large organizations that need scalability and reliability. Session-clustering and high availability fail-over are featured. Job queues offer off-line processing for improved interactive responsiveness. A download server offers as much as a tenfold increase in file download speeds. Subscriptions to Zend Platform start at $1,500 per server for the PS release.
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Hardware expected to begin selling next year is designed to make it faster and more efficient to run Java programs.
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Kyoto University in Japan has ordered an AMD Opteron-based supercomputer that&#39;s not only powerful but achieves considerable energy savings over its current machine.The cluster will consist of 416 of Fujitsu&#39;s HX600 high-performance computers. Each of those machines is based on four quad-core Opteron processors so a total of 1,664 processors and 6,656 Opteron cores will be busy inside the machine, running applications such as scientific calculations, genomic information processing, computer graphics, and large archive searches.Alongside the main cluster will sit a symmetric multiprocessing cluster consisting of seven Sparc enterprise Unix servers, each based on Sparc64 processors, and with 1TB of memory.The theoretical peak performance of the computer will be 61.2T Flops (floating point operations per second), which would put it somewhere within the top 20 most powerful computers in the world if it was built today.It will be seven times as powerful as the supercomputer it will replace at Kyoto University, and advances in electronics in the last few years mean it will consume the same amount of power or -- put another way -- it will require only 15 percent of the watts per teraflop.Energy consumption is becoming an increasingly important issue as supercomputers become more powerful. Underlining this importance a new ranking of supercomputers was published in 2007 that looks at their energy efficiency.The Green 500 list was developed by two professors at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the inaugural list put the IBM BlueGene/P system at the Daresbury Laboratory of the Science and Technology Facilities Council in the U.K. at the number one spot. The computer produces 357M Flops per watt.Fujitsu didn&#39;t release precise energy consumption figures for the computer to be installed at Kyoto University but said the entire machine would consume about 600 kilowatts of power. Based on the theoretical peak performance that works out to an energy efficiency of about 102M Flops per watt for the new computer.
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In the only raw performance test figures revealed yesterday by Intel Senior Vice President Pat Gelsinger at Fall IDF in San Francisco, preliminary tests of the company's forthcoming quad-core "Harpertown" architecture Xeon 5400 show it beating a quad-core Opteron 2300 system in the critical SPEC floating point throughput rate test by just over 4%.
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Jon Udell tries the Elastic Compute Cloud -- a Web service that provides resizable compute capacity.
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While low-end Dellintel trumps IBM's 4.7GHz heater Pop quiz. You're in desperate need of making Java fly and have the coin to prove it. Do you shell out on IBM's new 4.7GHz Power6 eye candy or keep on replacing Unix kit with x86 systems?â¦
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Taking an innovative approach to the marketing of high-performance  computing, Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) is offering its N1 Grid program in a pay-for-use pricing model that mimics the way such commodities as electricity and wireless phone plans are sold.