A Distributed Java Virtual Machine for a Beowulf Cluster

This Project began as part of the ANU-Fujitsu CAP Program, Phase III. It is continuing over 2004--7 with funding of the ARC-funded Discovery Project DP0449670, Towards High-performance and Fault-tolerant Distributed Java Implementations .

This page is old dJVM project page, as at the start of 2004.

The current dJVM Project Page is at http://djvm.anu.edu.au.

Objectives

Java is becoming increasingly important in implementing server applications. As many of these applications are multi-threaded with limited interaction between threads, a distributed JVM on a cluster platform may provide a cost-effective and high performance solution.

The objective of this Project is to design, implement, and evaluate a distributed Jave Virtual Machine on a cluster computer.

Approach

Our approach is to use the newly-released Jikes RVM as a basis for a distributed JVM. This is due to its use of advanced IT (Just-In-Time) translation for high performance. Its implementation, largely based on Java itself, makes it also suitable for such an extension.

As an alternative to using a a general Distributed Shared Memory implementation, a more specialized scheme for distribution, which can better take advantage of Java's semantics, will be investigated.

The target platform is the ANU Beowulf Cluster. This contemporary cluster has 96 dual Pentium III nodes connected using a Fast Ethernet switch; it is thus ideal to demonstrate scalability of a dJVM on a large, COTS cluster.

The Research Team and Contact

The current dJVM team members are Steven Blackburn, Ramesh Sankaranarayana, James Sinnamon, Peter Strazdins, and John N Zigman. John is probably the most suitable for first contact about the Project.

Project Milestones

Oct 2001: negotiation of inclusion of dJVM in CAP Program Phase III
Dec 2001: full project proposal completed
Sep 2002: 1st release of dJVM to Fujitsu Laboratories (able to run unmodified threaded Java programs over a cluster)
Sep 2003: 2nd release of dJVM to Fujitsu Laboratories (`port' to use Jikes 2.2.0, significant performance improvements, fault-tolerant dJVM prototype)
Feb 2004: public release of dJVM sources under CPL
Jul 2004: ARC project DP0449670 begins

Publications

dJVM chapter in CAP Program Report, 2001: short form of its proposal)
John Zigman and Ramesh Sankaranarayana. Designing a Distributed JVM on a cluster, , Technical Report TR-CS-02-04, Department of Computer Science, Australian National University, Sep 2002 (later published at ESM 2003).
dJVM chapter in CAP Program Report, 2002: design and implementation of the first release
James Sinnamon, Peter Strazdins and John Zigman, The Jikes Distributed Java Virtual Machine Manual, Version 0.2 alpha