Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Development
    • Development

    AMD, Oracle Team for OpenJDK ‘Sumatra’ Java GPU Project

    By
    Darryl K. Taft
    -
    October 2, 2012
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      Advanced Micro Devices has announced its participation in an OpenJDK project to enable Java applications to take advantage of graphic processing unit (GPU) acceleration.

      During a strategy keynote at the JavaOne 2012 conference in San Francisco, AMD announced its participation in the OpenJDK Project “Sumatra” in collaboration with Oracle and other members of the OpenJDK community to help bring heterogeneous computing capabilities to Java for server and cloud environments.

      The OpenJDK Project “Sumatra” will explore how the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), as well as the Java language and APIs, might be enhanced to allow applications to take advantage of GPU acceleration, either in discrete graphics cards or in high-performance graphics processor cores such as those found in AMD accelerated processor units (APUs).

      As emerging server and cloud platforms tap into the heterogeneous compute capabilities of APUs and discrete GPUs to achieve enhanced power and performance capabilities, developers are requiring mainstream programming models such as Java to help them harness the advantages of GPU acceleration, said Gary Frost, a software engineer and principal member of the technical staff at AMD, told eWEEK. Project “Sumatra” may also provide guidance on enabling heterogeneous compute support for other Java Virtual Machine- (JVM-) based) languages such as Scala, JRuby and Jython.

      “Affirming our plans to contribute to the OpenJDK Project represents the next step towards bringing heterogeneous computing to millions of Java developers and can potentially lead to future developments of new hardware models, as well as server and cloud programming paradigms,” said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, Heterogeneous Applications and Developer Solutions at AMD, in a statement. “AMD has an established track record of collaboration with open-software development communities from OpenCL to the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation, and with this initiative we will help further the development of graphics acceleration within the Java community.”

      “We expect our work with AMD and other OpenJDK participants in Project “Sumatra” will eventually help provide Java developers with the ability to quickly leverage GPU acceleration for better performance,” said Georges Saab, vice president of software development in the Java Platform Group at Oracle, in a statement. “We hope individuals and other organizations interested in this exciting development will follow AMD’s lead by joining us in Project “Sumatra.”

      AMD’s Frost said AMD set out to solve the issue of Java leveraging GPUs in an open-source project known as Aparapi, which is a contraction of “A PAR(allel) API,” he added. Aparapi enables Java developers to take advantage of the compute power of GPU and APU devices by executing data parallel code fragments on the GPU rather than being confined to the local CPU. It does this by converting Java byte code to OpenCL at runtime and executing on the GPU; if for any reason Aparapi can’t execute on the GPU, it will execute in a Java thread pool, according to the Aparapi page on the Google Code site.

      “We were going well with Aparapi but decided we needed to collaborate with Oracle and others rather than just working from the outside,” Frost said. He added that for the GPU compute additions to be successful, Project Sumatra will have to build on top of Java 8, which will feature support for lambda functions. “The time frame for rolling out a Sumatra-enabled JVM is after Java 8 or closer to Java 9,” he said.

      An August 2012 proposal for the Sumatra project said: “We will start exploring leveraging the new Java 8 Lambda language and library features. As this project progresses, we may identify challenges with the Java API and constructs which may lead to new language, JVM and library extensions that will need standardization under the JCP [Java Community Process] process.”

      Individuals and organizations interested in participating can join the OpenJDK Community and Project “Sumatra” by visiting openjdk.java.net.

      Avatar
      Darryl K. Taft
      Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×