Avian A lightweight alternative to Java
Download

Avian Ranking & Summary

Avian Tags

compile virtual machine VM java alternative alternative virtual machine JIT compilation

Avian Description

A lightweight alternative to Java Avian is a lightweight virtual machine and class library designed to provide a useful subset of Java's features, suitable for building self-contained applications. Platform-specific code is hidden behind a generic interface, so adding support for new OSes is easy. Avian currently supports Mac OS X (i386 and PowerPC), Linux (i386 and x86_64), and Windows (i386), with more to come.The only third-party dependency beyond OS-provided libraries is zlib, which is itself very portable. Although the VM is written in C++, it does not depend on the C++ standard library, and is therefore robust in the face of ABI changes. Not only can applications embed the VM, but the VM itself supports class and resource loading from embedded jar files. This means you can produce a single executable containing your entire application, thus simplifying the installation process. Here are some key features of "Avian": · Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation for fast method execution · Generational, copying garbage collection ensures short pause times and good spatial locality · Thread-local heaps provide O(1) memory allocation with no synchronization overhead · Null pointer dereferences are handled via OS signals to avoid unnecessary branches What's New in This Release: · Modified JIT compiler to support PowerPC, including changes which should make porting to other ISAs and ABIs much easier. · Implemented proper UTF-8 encoding and decoding in java.lang.String. · Added support for volatile fields. Avian now fully supports the Java Memory Model. · Added an ad-hoc interface for generating heap snapshots at runtime, useful for memory profiling. · Added support for ahead-of-time compilation and classfile parsing. This feature helps improve the startup time of large applications and reduces GC overhead -- at the cost of larger binaries. · Fixed various bugs and performance bottlenecks.

Avian Related Software