Implementing jalapeño in Java

Abstract

Jalapeno is a virtual machine for Java™ servers written in Java.A running Java program involves four layers of functionality: the user code, the virtual-machine, the operating system, and the hardware. By drawing the Java / non-Java boundary below the virtual machine rather than above it, Jalapeno reduces the boundary-crossing overhead and opens up more opportunities for optimization.To get Jalapeno started, a boot image of a working Jalapeno virtual machine is concocted and written to a file. Later, this file can be loaded into memory and executed. Because the boot image consists entirely of Java objects, it can be concocted by a Java program that runs in any JVM. This program uses reflection to convert the boot image into Jalapeno's object format.A special MAGIC class allows unsafe casts and direct access to the hardware. Methods of this class are recognized by Jalapeno's three compilers, which ignore their bytecodes and emit special-purpose machine code. User code will not be allowed to call MAGIC methods so Java's integrity is preserved.A small non-Java program is used to start up a boot image and as an interface to the operating system.Java's programming features — object orientation, type safety, automatic memory management — greatly facilitated development of Jalapeno. However, we also discovered some of the language's limitations.