Overview of excelsior JET, a high performance alternative to java virtual machines
Vitaly V. Mikheev, Nikita V. Lipsky, D.S. Gurchenkov, Pavel Yu. Pavlov, Vladimir V. Sukharev, Alexey S. Markov, Sergey V. Kuksenko, Stanislav A. Fedoseev, Dmitry V. Leskov, A. Yeryomin · 2002
This paper describes the architecture of Excelsior JET, a Java optimizing environment based upon ahead-of-time compilation of Java bytecode to platform-specific (native) code. Advantages of static compilation originate from the possibility of employing powerful resource-expensive optimizations resulting in much better code quality than in the case of dynamic (just-in-time) complation implemented in contemporary Java Virtual Machines (JVMs). Moreover, a noticeable innovation of JET is the Mixed Compilation Model that allows a compiled program to load classes dynamically as the Java Language Specification requires. Along with a highly optimizing compiler, JET includes a scalable run-time system that provides effective memory management with garbage collection, threading, etc. The experimental results presented in the paper were obtained on a variety of benchmarks and real-world Java applications. Tested against two most popular JVMs (Sun HotSpot and IBM JIT), programs optimized by JET demonstrated better performance and lower resource demand in most cases.