Java on ARM. Theory, Applications and Workloads by Dmitry Chuyko

Although ARM processors are almost always viewed as having been designed for the embedded market, several vendors are making a bet and building server CPUs that contend with x86 in cloud deployments. With the presence of the Java ARM port and a wide variety of applications in the Java ecosystem able to run on ARM CPUs, the real question is which workloads are best suited to the ARM servers niche and which metrics can be optimized for using ARM servers. This presentation explores the status of Java and the Java ecosystem on ARM, together with the Java ARM port features and performance of specific workloads. Some focus is on the recent changes in the Java ARM port, to which the speaker’s company actively contributes. Dmitry Chuyko is a performance engineer at BellSoft, which is among the top 5 contributors to OpenJDK. Before joining BellSoft, Dmitry programmed in Java, and then worked on Hotspot JVM in Oracle. After all, previous experience with Java has shown that the most interesting problems in applications get their solutions in the base platform. Currently Dmitry mostly optimizes OpenJDK for x86 and ARM, the company even implemented its own optimizing JEP 315 in Java 11. BellSoft releases and supports Liberica JDK — a verified distribution of OpenJDK. Liberica is available in the form of binary assemblies, installers and container images for different operating systems and processors. Therefore, now the focus of attention is the work of various versions of Java in containers.