A new project to explore whether it is possible to seamlessly boost Java applications by getting the Java Virtual Machine to take advantage of a GPU has been proposed by Oracle and AMD on the OpenJDK mailing list. Rather than using the GPU for graphics, the aim would be to harness the GPU to perform computational work.

The project, to be sponsored by the HotSpot group at Oracle, will look at ways to demonstrate the advantages of moving at least some of the computing effort of running Java from the CPU to the GPU. The idea will be to use the Hotspot JVM implementation, which has advanced runtime analysis of code performance, as a basis for the project; the developers will then look at generating GPU code, garbage collection around that code, and runtime code to support the offloaded GPU code. The aim is to improve performance but leave compile time, memory consumption, and generated code quality untouched.

The developers want to start their work around Java 8's Lambda language and library features but they do expect to "identify challenges" with the Java API. This would lead to new language or extensions to the JVM and libraries that would need standardisation through the JCP. Another goal of the project would be to provide guidance to developers of JVM-hosted languages such as JavaScript/Nashorn, Scala and JRuby, on how to enable GPU support in their languages.

The project has goals in common with the recently announced Rootbeer GPU compiler project and there is a possibility that the developers on both projects could work together. AMD's Gary Frost confirmed the company is prepared to have its engineers be Committers to the project too.

(djwm)