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The goal of this project is to provide a full-featured andcertifiable version of OpenJDK on the Linux/PowerPC and AIX/PowerPCplatforms which can be ultimately integrated into the main OpenJDKdevelopment branches.
Besides the very fact that this project will enrich the OpenJDKplatform coverage with two new platforms we see two more mainbenefits. By supporting the PowerPC architecture we will add thefirst weak memory architecture to OpenJDK. As we already know frompast experience, this will unveil all kinds of intricate memoryordering problems. Moreover, adding AIX as a new Unix flavor to theset of supported operating systems will uncover numerous implicitassumptions and shortcuts inside the code base which only hold truefor Linux and Solaris. We strongly believe that fixing these issueswill considerably increase the robustness and further portabilityof OpenJDK.
The technical approach and a brief project agenda are asfollows:
To assist with project bootstrapping and maintain momentum of VMporting issues independently from class library issues the projectwill evolve aninterface between the VM and class libraries that allowsalternative implementations to be substituted. The project willstart by porting the stable JDK 7 code base with a view to movingonto the JDK 8 stream as soon as practical.
The project will initially be driven jointly by IBM and SAP whoboth have a long-standing experience in developing and porting JDKsto various platforms including Linux/PowerPC and AIX/PowerPC. Butas this is an open source project of course anybody interested ishighly welcome to join the porting effort. The complete developmentprocess and discussions will happen in the open on the projectmailing list.
As of July 2012,the project has reached its first milestone. An interpreter onlyversion of the PowerPC port is available on Linux/PPC64. Itsuccessfully runs the JVM98 benchmark and is able to bootstrapitself. There's a transitionalppc-aix-portproject page available which contains the nightly build logs ofour project repositories on various platforms and a compiledversion of the OpenJDK for Linux/PPC64 which can be used as abootstrap JDK during the build process. The next steps will be tocomplete the build on AIX (currently only the HotSpot build isworking on AIX) and start the port of the C2 server JITcompiler.
As of December2012, the project has reached its second milestone. Amixed-mode VM (with the C++ Interpreter and the C2"Server" JIT compiler) is available on both Linux/PPC64and AIX/PPC64. It successfully runs different benchmarks (JVM98,JBB2005 and DaCapo) and is able to bootstrap itself. On ourtransitionalppc-aix-portproject page you can download precompiled binaries of this newversion of our port which can be used as a bootstrap JDK during thebuild process. There's also a detailedREADME-ppc.html file available which describes the buildprocess on the two porting platforms. The next steps will be tocertify our ports on Linux/PPC64 and AIX/PPC64 and integrate themupstream into the main JDK7/8 repositories. Concurrently we arealso working on improving the performance which still lags behindthat of our closed implementations.
As of January2013, the project has reached its third milestone. The porthas been stabilize and it successfully passed all the Java SE 7Test Compatibility Kit (TCK) tests on SLES 11.1 Linux/PPC64 and AIX5.3/PPC64. This means that the port is now fully compliant with theJava SE 7 specification on the named platforms. We have alsoinitiated and filed "JEP 175 : Integrate PowerPC/AIXPort into JDK 8". The next steps will be to synchronize ourjdk7 repository with jdk7u-dev (we're currently still 7u6 based)and start working full steam on the integration of our changes intojdk8.
As of April 2013,the project has finalized its work on the Java 7 port. We'vesynchronized with the upstreamhttp://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk7urepository at tag 'jdk7u14-b14'. This particularly means that wenow have a HotSpot 24 with the new JSR292 implementation in ourJDK7 port. We also have a fully functional HotSpot 25 onLinux/PPC64 as well as on AIX in ourhttp://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk8/hotspotrepository and on Linux/PPC64 the complete JDK8 can be build withthe new build system. Currently we are focusing on completing theJDK8 port with the new build system on AIX.
Please notice thatwe will not post status updates hereanymore. Please use our brand newPowerPC/AIX PortOpenJDK Wiki Space for late-breaking news.
Nightly build:http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~simonis/ppc-aix-port
