Google TechTalks
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2011–2017
52:38 · 80K views · Apr 5, 2011
Cliff Click of Azul Systems asks what a JVM is supposed to do, in a Google Tech Talk from 2011. He covers the services a JVM provides, such as garbage collection and compilation, and the messy reality beneath the abstractions.
A repeated recommendation for anyone interested in VMs, with Click's talks regarded as unusually informative on JVMs, JITs and the user/kernel boundary.
8 comments from Hacker News
Cliff Click was the jvm architect at sun then spent a decade at azul systems as their jvm architect. The talk is "A JVM Does That?" It's well worth watching if you are interested in vms at all. this video
I'm not part of the Java world at all, but I'm starting to think that Azul Systems is one of the few groups of people who know what they're doing with regard to Linux performance and the user/kernel boundary. I recently watched some talks by Cliff Click[1] that were extremely informative, and from what I understand about their proposed kernel patches, they seem like important improvements. This report by Gil Tene (their CTO according to Wikipedia) lends more support to that theory. [1] this video
There is a fascinating talk by Cliff Click "A JVM Does That?" At the end he shares some opinion about what should be done by JVM or OS and what should change. video: this video slides: [LINK] I remember a talk, where he was also talking about hardware. It does not seem to be this one. For example, a time register would be useful. Syscalls like clock_gettime are too slow. CPU info like cycle counts fail with dynamic frequency scaling.
There are some interesting challenging when scaling this large with any system. Peter referenced some of Azul System's stuff and their custom GC. Cliff Click from Azul has done some great Google Tech Talks about JVM development and scaling JVM's out to really big systems.[1][2] [1] A JVM Does That? - this video [2] Java on a 1000 Cores - [LINK]
Probably this one: [LINK] Anything from Cliff Click is quite good. This guy has a very deep understanding of compilers, virtual-machines, CPUs, and their interactions. A JVM does that? this video Java on a 1000 Cores [LINK]