News from Oct 20, 2007

We're very proud to announce that Jikes RVM version 2.9.2 is now available for download. As you can see from the appended release notes, there's been quite a bit of activity on the project since 2.9.1!
The release is available at http://downloads.sourceforge.net/jikesrvm/jikesrvm-2.9.2.tar.bz2.

New Features

• [RVM-121] - Separate code space for dynamically generated code
• [RVM-231] - Alignment checking (for IA32 and debugging purposes only)

Improvements

• [RVM-16] - Constant folding values from TIBs produces failures
• [RVM-27] - float/double to int/long conversions are overly expensive
• [RVM-51] - Switch from pthread hijacking back to portable native sync for gtk AWT threading
• [RVM-54] - Switch to Claspath's java.lang.Thread
• [RVM-64] - Flexible thread model
• [RVM-82] - Exceptions in Uninterruptible code should result in immediate fatal errors
• [RVM-94] - Enable SSE C/C++ compiler flags
• [RVM-164] - Use clock_gettime to implement sysNanoTime
• [RVM-179] - Move java/lang/String out of libraryInterface and into a patch against Classpath
• [RVM-185] - Reduce cost of ThreadLocal(s) to improve Jython performance
• [RVM-189] - Use will never move information from MM_Interface when generating constant operands
• [RVM-191] - Improve inline size estimator in VM_NormalMethod to account for getstatic of final primitive fields being folded by opt compiler
• [RVM-218] - Use VM_Magic.pause in spinwait loops
• [RVM-285] - Switch AOS call graph profiling to use CBS framework from Arnold & Grove 2005

Bug Fixes

• [RVM-55] - A thread that is interrupted prior to being scheduled won't interrupt
• [RVM-62] - Interrupted exceptions are generated in the caller of Thread.interrupt instead of by the thread throwing the interrupted exception
• [RVM-63] - Unsafe.park time values are incorrectly scaled
• [RVM-87] - NPE in ScanThread.setUpFrame:360
• [RVM-99] - MeasureCompilation reporting broken in production/development builds on ia32-linux
• [RVM-104] - eclipse occasionally fails with segmentation fault
• [RVM-109] - Restore documentation to org.vmmagic.pragma.*
• [RVM-112] - Verification error when building Jikes RVM 2.9.1 using HotSpot as host JVM.
• [RVM-113] - MarkCompactLocal.compact():80 assertion failure
• [RVM-114] - Ensure time is positive in test results
• [RVM-125] - Waiting on a lock that should raise illegal monitor state exception will actual fail on an assert
• [RVM-129] - GCTrace fails with "Cannot understand directive!"
• [RVM-131] - Collection.joinCollection() called when thread switching disabled
• [RVM-133] - Increase the amount of memory used during nightly tests
• [RVM-140] - Conflicting virtual address request for space "trace" on ppc32-linux
• [RVM-141] - SharedDeque assertion failure during exit for GCTrace
• [RVM-143] - VM_BuildBB.determineTheBasicBlock may not be correct for goto_w operation
• [RVM-144] - JikesRVM can't load certain classes e.g. GNU Classpath examples or its own Ant tasks
• [RVM-150] - Unexpectedly large processor lock contention
• [RVM-154] - A shutdown hook can hang RVM
• [RVM-155] - SynchronizationBarrier.removeProcessor assertion failure
• [RVM-159] - OSR-guarded inlining should not be allowed in uninterruptible code
• [RVM-181] - ClassCastException in OPT_Simplifier when running antlr DaCapo
• [RVM-183] - Thread sitting on >1 queue
• [RVM-194] - Assertion failure in OSR State Extractor running chart
• [RVM-198] - NPE when unlocking lock
• [RVM-201] - Classpath AWT is broken
• [RVM-203] - terminal not in grammar: new
• [RVM-204] - Reduce wasted code space on inline allocation path
• [RVM-206] - Stack walking in MMTk not correctly identifying not yet obsolete methods?
• [RVM-209] - Bootimage bloat broke ppc64-aix images
• [RVM-213] - jbb2005 performance regression
• [RVM-216] - MMTk assertion failure during jbb large heap performance runs
• [RVM-219] - Address.attempt*() compiles incorrectly on IA32 with Jikes 2.9.1
• [RVM-220] - jbb2005 GC performance mode: Warning: number of GC phases exceeds MAX_PHASES
• [RVM-242] - Build break: BaseBaseGCTrace
• [RVM-245] - Change to deques appears to have significantly reduced hsqldb performance
• [RVM-270] - NPEs from barrier code not working
• [RVM-277] - lusearch fails on PPC32 due to validation error
• [RVM-279] - Performance regression
• [RVM-293] - Class loaders do not isolate packages with the same name
• [RVM-297] - Classpath 0.96 configure problems with JDK 1.6
• [RVM-298] - DaCapo chart broken on classpath 0.96
• [RVM-299] - possible performance regression on xalan on classpath 0.96
• [RVM-301] - JSR 166 failures

Tasks and Sub-tasks

• [RVM-38] - VM_BaselineBootImageCompiler should use System.nanoTime rather than DNA for compilation time
• [RVM-286] - _201_compress took a 10% hit when we switched to Arnold/Grove call graph profiling; investigate
• [RVM-217] - Recode spin loop in org.mmtk.utility.deque.Deque spinWait to reduce frequency of nanoTime calls
• [RVM-230] - Determine whether patching Classpath sources is preferable to bytecode engineering adding annotations