[Isolate-interest] MVM for research

[Grzegorz Czajkowski]

Curt,

thanks for your note, probably caused by this article:
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/mvm.

> Which may be old news to everyone else, but it is new news to me.  Would
> anyone care to divulge or speculate:
> - when?

Getting there. The bits are mostly ready, waiting for the necessary
clearances, etc. At this point I can only say: on the order of weeks.

> - what existing Java technology is this based on and/or most like?

Extension of JDK 5, but (initially at least) with some limitations;
for example, it'll be headless. So think of it as J2SE + isolates,
initially w/o GUI.

> - what if any isolate related APIs will this contain?

The first release will have a home-made version of the Isolate API in
it (i.e., something we cooked up based on early drafts of the JSR 121).
Once the JSR 121 finalizes (which hopefully is really soon) we're
planning to have that JSR implemented. In later releases of MVM
we're planning to add code that supports resource management,
clustering, and service management. Our public Web site
(http://research.sun.com/projects/barcelona) has some papers
on these topics.

> - what are research purposes?

Experimenting with MVM and designing & implementing of varius
extensions to the APIs and/or the underlying MVM implementation.
Multi-tasking virtual machines are a relatively
recent concept, there are many opportunities for challenging research
here. Another way of reading "research purposes" is "not for
commercial use".

Regards,
Greg