CS510JIP Understanding Java Implementation (Winter 1998)

Instructor: Andrew Tolmach

Syllabus (postscript)

Projects!

Here is a selection of results from student projects.

Wen Huang, Java Performance Comparison
Matthew Mead, Java Native Interface
Phil Grimm, Stack Code Optimization
Jags Ramnarayan, Java Byte Code Compression

Tools

Version 1.1.1 of Sun's Java Development Kit is installed on the PSU CS network; do "addpkg jdk1.1.1" to add it to your set of configured packages.
You can fetch a copy of the latest release (currently 1.1.5) for your own Sparc or MS system directly from Sun.
Other tools are installed on the PSU CS system in /u/jipacc. These include:
- jasmin - a JVM assembler.
  - To use, add /u/jipacc/jasmin/bin to your path (/pkgs/jdk1.1.1/bin must be in your path too).
  - Assembler documentation.
  - Handy on-line reference for the instruction set.
  - You can download your own copy from here.
- D-Java - a JVM disassembler that can produce jasmin-format output (unlike SUN's javap -c).
  - To use, add /u/jipacc/D-Java/bin to your path.
  - For jasmin-compatible output, use the -o jasmin option.
  - For detailed use information, consult the file /u/jipacc/D-Java/readme.
  - You can download your own copy from here.
- mocha - a bytecode-to-Java decompiler
  - To use, consult /u/jipacc/mocha/Readme.txt.
  - You can download your own copy from here. Note the legal controversy.
  - Try out another decompiler called SourceAgain (sometimes crashes my browser).
  - For more information about decompilers, take a look at Dave Dyer's article "Java decompilers compared".
- kaffe - a JVM interpreter and JIT compiler with public source
  - To use, consult /u/jipacc/kaffe-0.9.2/README.
  - Have a look at the source code in /u/jipacc/kaffe-0.9.2/kaffe/kaffevm.
  - You can download your own copy from here.
Reading and writing .class files.
- To write Java .class files, try generating text output that can be fed to the jas assembler (installed in the class account as part of jasmin).
- For an example of how to read Java .class files into C, take a look at the kaffe source code.
- To read or write .class files directly in Java, consider Java Class.
For those wanting to do code generation for the PCAT language, a complete front end (for the SPARC) and (C-based) tools for manipulating abstract syntax are now installed in /u/jipacc/pcat, or you can download them.

Syllabus

Jan. 8 Introduction; the Java language. (4up postscript)

James Gosling, "Java Intermediate Bytecodes," Proc. ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Intermediate Representations, Jan. 1995.
James Gosling & Henry McGilton, The Java Language Environment White Paper, May 1996.
Tim Lindholm & Frank Yellin, The Java Virtual Machine, Sept. 1996, especially Chapters 3 and 7.

Jan. 15 Java Virtual Machine specification. (4up postscript)

Jan. 22 JVM Specification (continued). (Notes incomplete.) (4up postscript)

Phil Koopman, A Preliminary Exploration of Optimized Stack Code Generation

Jan. 29 Internal structure of Java Virtual Machine. (Outline only.) Mini-interpreter source code

Anton Ertl, "Stack Caching for Interpreters", Proc. ACM Conf. on Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 1995.
Romer, et al., "The structure and performance of Interpreters", Proc. ACM Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Oct. 1996.

Feb. 5 Interpretation vs. just-in-time compilation.

Hummel, Azevedo, Kolson, and Nicolau, "Annotating the Java Bytecodes in Support of Optimization," ACM 1997 Workshop on Java for Science and Engineering Computation, Las Vegas, Nevada, June 1997.
Krall and Grafl, "CACAO - A 64 bit JavaVM Just-in-Time Compiler", ACM 1997 Workshop on Java for Science and Engineering Computation, Las Vegas, Nevada, June 1997.

Feb. 12 Garbage collection. (4up postscript) Deadline for agreeing on project/report topics

Jones and Lins, Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management (a real book, not on the web).
Paul Wilson's comprehensive survey on garbage collection.
Information about the Boehm-Weiser-Demers Conservative garbage collector.

Feb. 19 Security for mobile code. (No lecture notes available.)

Drew Dean, Edward W. Felten, Dan S. Wallach, and Dirk Balfanz, Java Security: Web Browsers and Beyond, Technical Report 566-97, Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, February 1997.
Dan S. Wallach, Dirk Balfanz, Drew Dean, and Edward W. Felten, Extensible Security Architectures for Java. 16th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (Saint-Malo, France), October, 1997.

Feb. 26 Mobile code.

Sun's RMI Interface
Thorn, Programming Languages for Mobile Code, (link broken?) ACM Computing Surveys, September 1997.
Cardelli, Mobile Computing.
Cardelli, A language with Distributed Scope (about Oblique).
Knabe, Language Support for Mobile Agents.
Henry Cejtin, Suresh Jagannathan, and Richard Kelsey, Higher-Order Distributed Objects, ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, September 1995. (about Kali Scheme)

Mar. 5 Whole-program optimization. Project/report due.

Urs Hoelzle, and David Ungar, Reconciling Responsiveness with Performance in Pure Object-Oriented Languages. ACM Transactions of Programming Languages and Systems, 1996.
Craig Chambers, Jeffrey Dean, and David Grove, Whole-program optimization of object-oriented languages. Tech. Rep. 96-06-02, Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Washington, (June, 1996).
David Bacon, Fast and Effective Optimization of Statically Typed Object-Oriented Languages. Dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1997.