Intel is not only the world's largest semiconductor company but also a longtime supporter and proponent of Java technology. As both a hardware provider and a software partner, the company has a decade-plus record of empowering the Java platform, participating in dozens of specs -- including Java ME, Java SE 6, and Java SE 7 -- as well as working with major software companies to ensure that Java technology-powered offerings take full advantage of Intel hardware. In the Thursday, May 8, general session, Douglas W. Fisher, vice president and general manager of the System Software Division, shared insights on how hardware can most effectively meet software in an era of abstraction, open source, cloud computing, social networking, and mobile Internet.
On January 22, 2007, just months before the 2007 JavaOne conference, Intel Corporation and Sun Microsystems announced a broad strategic alliance dedicated to furthering one another's technology initiatives. Intel committed to working closely with Sun to optimize both the Java platform and the Solaris operating system for the Intel Xeon processor. Meanwhile, Sun committed to delivering a comprehensive family of enterprise and telecommunications servers and workstations based on Intel Xeon processors. And before the ink had dried on the agreement, the work of the partnership began.
"The expertise that was brought together proved to be a match made in heaven," says Tony Baker, director of managed runtime technology, Intel Corporation. "Intel brought an intimate knowledge of its processors to the table, while Sun brought an intimate knowledge of Java technology and the Solaris operating system -- allowing both Solaris and Java to take maximum advantage of the advanced features found in the Intel Xeon processor."
Although the collaboration really only began at last year's JavaOne conference, that work has already paid sizable dividends. "At JavaOne last year, we were able to demonstrate early versions of our work together that demonstrated 20% performance improvements with Java programs," says Baker. "And over the past year, we've been able to achieve additional gains that exceed 40%."
"So that's an aggregate of around a 60% performance gain -- an astounding figure in the world of software. Typical performance improvements are in the neighborhood of single digits each year. And what this translates to for developers and customers is greater application throughput -- the ability to handle bigger and better things."
But as with most significant achievements, these gains have actually been composed of many small steps. "It's all about analyzing how Java programs behave on Intel hardware," explains Baker. "A server relies upon a memory hierarchy. There's a very fast cache that's local to the system, and beyond that, you have to go to slower memory. So analyzing how Java behaves on the system allows you to optimize the use of that fast cache. Then, at a deeper level, you can look at how Java programs translate to specific machine instructions. If there are multiple choices, and you pick the best ones, you're going to execute faster. In the end, it's been a stepwise set of improvements. You find the opportunities, you improve the code, and then you find the next ones."
Meanwhile, Intel's latest version of the Intel Xeon processor has brought even further performance gains. "It's been in the neighborhood of 30 to 40%," says Baker. "So if you compound that with the gains we've seen as a result of software optimization for the Java platform, you're approaching doubling the level of performance we saw prior to last year on state-of-the-art hardware from Intel."
Baker suggests that Java developers stay tuned for even greater performance gains, explaining that Intel is set to produce a major revision of its microarchitecture in approximately two-year cycles -- which has yet to occur since the alliance with Sun. "So the 30 to 40% performance increase we've seen in terms of hardware gains has occurred using the same basic architecture design, simply by making it faster and more efficient."
Next year's Intel processor, code-named Nehalem, has been redesigned from the ground up and promises new levels of performance, scalability, and energy efficiency. "It's a brand new design," says Baker, "with quad core, a very fast bus, and some incredible new design changes. And we've already begun working in earnest with Sun in terms of tuning the Java platform for the architecture. In the past, we would deliver a new system, and then some nine months later, Sun would be able to deliver software that made use of it. But with our new collaboration, the process of tuning the software for new hardware can begin almost immediately."
As part of the Intel general session, Jeet Kaul, vice president of Client Business Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc., will join Intel's Douglas Fisher onstage to discuss Sun's commitment to the alliance with Intel. Sun has already introduced a series of server products using the Intel Xeon processor, including the Sun Fire X4150 server, Sun Fire X4450 server, Sun Blade X6000, and Sun Blade X6048.
Intel's technology vision spans a breadth beyond the high-end server market, however. As part of Fisher's exploration of the mobile Internet market, he will discuss Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) powered by the Intel Centrino Atom processor. Packed with 47 million transistors on a single chip and measuring less than 25 mm square, Atom has been specifically designed for energy-efficient MIDs -- enabling a new generation of mobile Internet, IM, voice over IP (VOIP), music, movies, and videos on the go.
As a leader in open source, Intel, along with other key ecosystems players, is investing in the Moblin.org community, an open-source community for sharing software technologies, ideas, projects, code, and applications to create a computing experience across MIDs. Moblin is expected to bring wide availability of the Intel Architecture (IA) to the handheld Internet device, and those developing software for mobile devices should learn more about this community.
In addition to Moblin.org, OpenSolaris, and the Java community, Intel continues to innovate and contribute to a variety of other open-source communities and projects -- involved in such work as virtualization, software-power savings, development tools, and Linux.
In the meantime, the work continues between the Intel and Sun teams, promising ever-new levels of performance, integration, and tuning. "Since our landmark agreement last year, we've set the pace for collaboration," says Douglas Fisher. "Our engineering teams have made great strides in optimizing Java, OpenSolaris, and parallelism tools using Intel Core microarchitecture features. And we're finding new opportunities to innovate on upcoming technologies."
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