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Java and .Net runtimes for LLVM
Participants : Harris Bakiras, Bertil Folliot, Julia Lawall, Jean-Pierre Lozi, Gaël Thomas [correspondent] , Gilles Muller, Thomas Preud homme, Koutheir Attouchi.
Many systems research projects now target managed runtime environments (MRE) because they provide better productivity and safety compared to native environments. Still, developing and optimizing an MRE is a tedious task that requires many years of development. Although MREs share some common functionalities, such as a Just In Time Compiler or a Garbage Collector, this opportunity for sharing has not been yet exploited in implementing MREs. We are working on VMKit, a first attempt to build a common substrate that eases the development and experimentation of high-level MREs and systems mechanisms. VMKit has been successfully used to build two MREs, a Java Virtual Machine and a Common Language Runtime, as well as a new system mechanism that provides better security in the context of service-oriented architectures.
VMKit is an implementation of a JVM and a CLI Virtual Machines (Microsoft .NET is an implementation of the CLI) using the LLVM compiler framework and the MMTk garbage collectors. The JVM, called J3, executes real-world applications such as Tomcat, Felix or Eclipse and the DaCapo benchmark. It uses the GNU Classpath project for the base classes. The CLI implementation, called N3, is its in early stages but can execute simple applications and the “pnetmark” benchmark. It uses the pnetlib project or Mono as its core library. The VMKit VMs compare in performance with industrial and top open-source VMs on CPU-intensive applications. VMKit is publicly available under the LLVM license.