Fwd: FYI: AS/400 Java "megaserver"

Received from a colleague...

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By Marc Songini Network World, 11/17/97

When you think of the AS/400, you probably conjure up an image of a
sturdy old minicomputer with a huge stable of stodgy reliable programs.
But IBM wants you to think of something a bit more modern - like Java.

To create that new image, IBM plans to turn its stalwart machine into a
high-performance Java server. The key is a new software package, set to
enter beta testing in the next few weeks, that includes a Java Virtual
Machine (JVM). The company does have a Java Virtual Machine - the
software that enables Java applications to run - for 32-bit AS/400s.
However, that product, the Java Developer Kit for V3R6, was meant only
as a technology preview and never shipped commercially.

The newly built AS/400, Version 4 Release 2, is tuned for speed,
something Java applications desperately need.

The AS/400 Java Virtual Machine might have never come to be were it not
for a group of renegade programmers, self-professed ''lab rats'' who
heard about Java in late 1995 and thought it was ''cool.'' They began
work on a clean room version of Sun's Java Virtual Machine, in part to
have their own, but also to tweak the software specifically for the
AS/400.

The programmers built a system to exploit the 64-bit PowerPC and added a
few more bells and whistles to boost the speed. For instance, they tied
the JVM to the AS/400's thread management, allowing Java applications to
run faster by multitasking.

They also built a system that could directly execute code or use the
more standard Just In Time compiler method, which interprets the code
each time it runs.

Also to boost AS/400 performance, the lab rats tweaked JVM features such
as garbage collection, which removes uneeded code from memory, and its
memory addressing.

IBM thinks the second time around it is getting Java right. ''We haven't
had a high-performance scalable server implementation of Java for the
AS/400,'' said Bill Berg, senior programmer at IBM's AS/400 division.
''This is what enables us to write anything we want in Java on the
AS/400 box.''

One analyst agreed. ''IBM has a computer born to serve Java,'' said
David Andrews, president of the D.H. Andrews Group, a Cheshire,
Conn.-based consultancy.

Java programmers also will be able to exploit specific AS/400 features.
Using AS/400 Toolbox for Java software (or native methods, which is a
standard Java feature), developers can access all existing AS/400
services and applications.

With Toolbox, users also can access remote databases or cluster AS/400s
together. Once clustered, AS/400s have fail-over capacity or can run
multiple e-business applications simultaneously. This new release also
corrects a shortcoming of the original AS/400 - lack of a graphical user
interface (GUI). With Java's Remote Abstract Windowing Toolkit, a native
Java GUI is transparently ported to client desktops.

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