(1120) Dual-Core, Niagara, Rock - Why Java Developers should care about Hardware

Work-in-Progress

Monday, 2007-06-25, 17:50 - 18:30, Arena 9

Peter Gassmann - Sun Microsystems (Schweiz) AG (speaker)

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Abstract

There is a critical force shaping the direction of software development: the deep adoption of parallel computing. The current technologies of chip multiprocessor (CMP) and chip multithreading (CMT) processor design will lead to large numbers of machines providing parallel computing power. It is quite easy to predict that, in addition to servers, most desktop machines or even laptops will be powered by multi-core or CMT processors over the next few years. As a result of this trend most applications could already in the near future take advantage of this available processing power. Java provides built-in support for multithreading and since JDK 5 also an extended library (java.util.concurrent) for this purpose. However, so far only developers of "naturally" parallelised applications, i.e. multi-user server applications or compute-intensive calculation applications, had to care about this. Another trend is the resurgence of Java-based desktop applications. Swing-based applications appear everywhere, partly also supported by rich-client frameworks such as the NetBeans Platform or the Eclipse Rich Client Platform. Exactly because of the excellent desktop-application and multithreading support in Java, developers should now start to explore how to use these features to provide an even snappier user experience to fully utilize the available computing power. Developers need to understand what the hardware can provide them, and they need to understand what options they have to build multithreaded applications. This talk will provide an overview of some of the available and coming processor architectures, including Intels and AMDs Multicore approaches, Sun's own Niagara and Rock processors, and will then focus on how Java supports developers and what developers should look at to fully utilize the available power.