Oracle has announced a new virtual machine, GraalVM 1.0. It is universal, that is, it is suitable for running applications written in many popular programming languages. Among them are JavaScript (Node.js), Python, Ruby, R, all JVM languages (Java, Scala, Clojure, Kotlin), as well as languages for which LLVM bitcode can be generated (these are C, C++ and Rust). The GraalVM 1.0 code is distributed under the GPLv2 license.
GraalVM 1.0 is needed to increase code execution performance and organize interaction between code written in different languages. With GraalVM you get a common runtime environment and the ability to access objects and arrays from other languages. For example, you can access a Java class library from JavaScript code (Node.js), or call statistics processing functions in Python from Java code. Or run R code to create complex SVG graphics. Thus, you can use several languages in a project, focusing not on the tool itself, but on the task. GraalVM can be used to create standalone executable applications and as part of platforms like OpenJDK and Node.js. Moreover, this virtual machine can be embedded as a data processing engine in DBMSs such as MySQL and Oracle.
To run applications, a standardized environment based on HotSpot JVM is used. GraalVM includes a JIT compiler that quickly executes code from any scripting language in the JVM, including JavaScript, Ruby, Python and R. The machine also allows you to run native code in the JVM, converted to LLVM bitcode. The system's tools include a language-independent debugger, a profiling system, and a memory allocation analyzer. You can create compiled native images for JVM languages. They are executed directly with minimal memory consumption: First, static analysis identifies all the code to execute the main Java method. Next, full-fledged ahead of time compilation (AOT) is applied to it.
GO TO FULL VERSION