This should be the year that Java gets up to speed.
Not content to wait for Sun Microsystems, Inc. to deliver its highly anticipated HotSpot compiling technology - now due out this summer - a number of big vendors such as IBM and relative unknowns such as Tower Technology Corp. are developing their own methods for improving Java byte-code performance.
Since its inception three years ago, slow performance has been Java's Achilles' heel. While developers and enterprise users are attracted to its cross-platform, "write once, run anywhere" potential, many are leery of deploying sluggish applications that bog down their networks.
"But enterprises are growing impatient waiting for the language to mature," said Ron Rappaport, an analyst at Zona Research, Inc., of Redwood City, Calif.
One solution vendors are pursuing is to create native compilers that improve the performance of Java applications on specific platforms; this differs from HotSpot, which will run on any Java-enabled platform.
For example, Tower Technology, of Austin, Texas, plans to debut "dynamic native compiler technology," designed for platform-specific server-side Java applications at next month's Java-One conference. The company's existing TowerJ 1.0 tool takes a developer's source code and compiles it for a platform, similar to the way programs are written and compiled in C or C++.
In contrast, TowerJ 2.0 is designed to boost the pool of Java applications based on byte code, which is inherently multiplatform. Byte code, compiled from Java source code, can be interpreted and run by a number of Java-based systems, such as Web browsers and network computers. Tower officials claim benchmark tests show that the company's TowerJ source code compiler and its new TowerJ 2.0 byte-code compiler can execute Java applications as fast as those written in C++.
IBM is developing similar software. The company's High Performance Compiler for Java compiles Java byte code into optimized platform-specific native object-oriented code.
IBM is now beta-testing the compiler, which the company claims is more effective than the just-in-time (JIT) compilers found in Java Virtual Machines.
Sun's weapon of choice to eliminate the Java speed problem is HotSpot. To meet its portability mandate, Java software is distributed in an intermediate language - byte code - that is translated for any platform "on the fly" by a Java Virtual Machine. However, this translation process hinders performance. To combat this problem, HotSpot finds the parts of an application that can be accelerated and makes them run faster.
But HotSpot has been beset by delays. Originally slated to ship last summer, the final version of HotSpot is now due to be released this summer.
A JavaSoft engineer working on HotSpot said that despite some criticism, the company has resisted rushing the software out the door.
"A virtual machine implementation is one of those 'no wine before its time' situations," said Tim Lindholm, a JavaSoft senior staff engineer. "It would not serve anybody for us to ship something that was going to be flaky."
But not everyone believes HotSpot will be a magic bullet. "HotSpot is trying to take JIT technology, which reads byte code on the fly and processes it, and keep looking at ways to make that faster. And you can only go so far," said Madison Cloutier, Tower's vice president of marketing.
Cloutier said TowerJ's advantage is that it optimizes languages statically - that is, before the application is deployed.
"TowerJ can hot-start applications. When you initiate execution, it's going to start running at full speed because it's already been optimized," Cloutier said. "With HotSpot, the application will start off cold and then dynamically adapt itself and get faster as it locates the 'hot spots.' "
JavaSofts Lindholm disagreed that the static model makes TowerJ superior to HotSpot. "If their issue is static vs. dynamic, we think static is going to lose," he said.
"The reason HotSpot is interesting is because of all the run-time information it gathers. If they're going to try to do their optimization up front, they can't do that. Furthermore, HotSpot can continually make adjustments as an application runs."
TowerJ 2.0 will run on a number of platforms, including SPARC Solaris, Windows NT, HP/UX and IBM AIX.
IBM's High Performance Compiler for Java runs on AIX 4.1.3, OS/2 Warp 4, Windows 95 and NT (3.5.1 and 4.0). An IBM official said the compiler will be released this summer.
