Scaling J2EE Application Servers with the Multi-tasking Virtual Machine (MVM) by Mick Jordan, Laurent Daynès, Grzegorz Czajkowski, Marcin Jarzab, and Ciarán Bryce

July 19, 2004 - Sun Labs announces new research showing significantly increased Java2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) scalability without losing strong isolation guarantees. Researchers on the Barcelona team developed and applied the Multi-tasking Virtual Machine (MVM) to the J2EE 1.3.1 reference implementation to obtain these exciting results.

J2EE provides a rich environment for hosting enterprise applications. In many areas, J2EE subsumes traditional operating system capabilities with higher-level facilities that more closely match the enterprise application environment, so a J2EE server can be seen as an operating environment for enterprise applications. Currently, however, the J2EE environment is incomplete in several important areas, notably strong inter-application isolation, limits on Java Virtual Machine(JVM) scalability, and comprehensive resource management. The Sun Labs MVM addresses these limitations by providing a scalable JVM that can support multiple concurrent applications, with strong isolation guarantees and resource controls. The results of this research are included in the latest Sun Labs Technical Report: Scaling J2EE Application Servers with the Multi-tasking Virtual Machine.

If the Java platform is truly to become the API that developers program to, then it must be complete in every area. The enterprise application environment is enormously important to Sun, and provides significant challenges to the completeness of the Java platform. By prototyping solutions to these challenges in the research environment, Sun Labs can determine, at relatively low risk, what works and what doesn't, and facilitate the development of the best technology solutions for Sun's customers.