JDK version ?

[Brian Adkins]

At 10:21 AM 3/24/99 -0700, Godmar Back wrote:
>> 
>> It is also the case that kaffe is a high-performance virtual machine.  I
>> haven't personally run any benchmarks (don't have anything from Sun
>> installed here) but I've seen benchmarks in which kaffe does very well.
>> 
>
>My take on this is that you should expect Kaffe with jit to perform about 
>as good as Sun's 1.1.7 interpreter for *real* applications.  For small
>benchmarks, you can see Kaffe outperform Sun and even Sun with TYA
>at times.  If you have an application where kaffe substantially lags 
>behind Sun's 1.1.7, please let us know.

It might be worthwhile to make whatever changes you need to be able to run
the Volano benchmark well:

http://www.javaworld.com/jw-03-1999/jw-03-volanomark.html

>Given the existence of Microsoft's JVM, calling Kaffe high-performance
>may not be the right word.  But: here's a tremendous chance of making
>a contribution.  Basically, the complete JIT in Kaffe is waiting to
>be ripped out and be replaced with an optimizing one. [3]
>
>> Kaffe's AWT is, IMO, a strong point too.  It doesn't use native widgets
>> (which you may find distasteful), but it's very fast, and it actually
>> performs according to spec, unlike most sun versions I've seen.
>> 
>
>You know, about the whole "performs according to spec".  I'm not really
>sure what that means.  Java is a Sun invention.  They defined both the
>"spec" and did several implementations.  Since they control the 
>standardization process, they always have the option of either fixing the 
>"spec" or fixing their implementation, or just to ignore discrepancies.  
>All of which they have been doing and are still doing, and they aren't
>even shy to admit it.
>
>Transvirtual and others are attempting to move some aspects of the control 
>over Java to an independent body [1], but similar attempts have failed in 
>the past (see the case of NIST of real-time Java [2]).
>
>It remains to be seen how the struggle between attempts to create an
>open standard and the fear of people that Java may disperse into 
>different standards without Sun's control will turn out.
>
>Until then, I'm afraid we have little choice but to pick and prefer  
>a given JDK reference implementation from Sun over whatever "spec"
>they release.  Of course, we should also lobby for making Java truely open.
>
>	- Godmar
>
>[1]: http://www.transvirtual.com/pressrelease/dase-proposal.html
>[2]: some background is here: http://www.newmonics.com/webroot/rtjwg/qa.html
>[3]: http://www.kaffe.org/develop.html#cool