Documentation Contents

Java Virtual Machine Enhancements in JDK 7

The follow pages introduce some of the larger changes relating to the Java Virtual Machine introduced in the JDK 7 release:

In addition, the following enhancements are added:

Area: HotSpot
Standard/Platform: Java SE 7 Update 1
Synopsis: JIT and Loop Bugs: Three bugs reported by various parties, including Apache Lucene developers, have been fixed in JDK 7 Update 1, in addition to a fourth related bug found by Oracle.
RFE: 7070134, 7068051, 7044738, 7077439

Area: HotSpot
Standard/Platform: Java SE 7
Synopsis: The JVM/TI version number was changed from 1.1 to 1.2 in order to add the GetLocalInstance method.
RFE: 7003782, 7004582

Area: HotSpot
Standard/Platform: JDK 7
Synopsis: Classfiles with version number 51 are exclusively veritified using the type-checking verifier, and thus the methods must have StackMapTable attributes when appropriate. For classfiles with version 50, the HotSpot JVM would (and continues to) failover to the type-inferencing verifier if the stackmaps in the file were missing or incorrect. This failover behavior does not occur for classfiles with version 51 (the default version for JDK7).
Any tool the modifies bytecode in a version 51 classfile must be sure to update the stackmap information to be consistent with the bytecode in order to pass verification.
RFE: 6693236

Area: HotSpot
Standard/Platform: JDK 7
Synopsis: In JDK 7, interned strings are no longer allocated in the permanent generation of the Java heap, but are instead allocated in the main part of the Java heap (known as the young and old generations), along with the other objects created by the application. This change will result in more data residing in the main Java heap, and lessw data in the permanent generation, and thus may require heap sizes to be adjusted. Most applications will see only relatively small differences in heap usage due to this change, but larger applications that load many classes or make heavy use of the String.intern() method will see more significant differences.
RFE: 6962931

Area: HotSpot
Standard/Platform: JDK 7
Synopsis: The default out-of-the-box heap size and shape parameters for the concurrent mark sweep collector (CMS) have been modified. The new settings take advantage of faster platforms that have been introduced since JDK 6 was released. Like the other collectors in HotSpot, CMS will now use the available physical memory on the platform to size its heap, while attempting to shape that heap to keep pause times associated with minor collections "reasonable". The specific shape of the heap may be platform-depenent in other ways as well.
Users can override all or some of these default settings by explicitly sizing or shaping the heap, AKA "heap tuning", to suit their specific needs.
For more information on the default settings for this and other garbage collectors, please see the Heap Tuning Guide for JDK 6.
RFE: 6896099

Area: HotSpot
Standard/Platform: JDK 7
Synopsis: The JDK 6 release notes included performance enhancements for CMS. To provide a mechanism to continue using the behavior provided by JDK 5, the CMSUseOldDefaults flag was provided. This flag restored a number of settings to a default state. During the last few years, this flag has received minimal use and most customers prefer the improved CMS performance. The CMSUseOldDefaults flag is now removed.
RFE: 7027529

Area: HotSpot
Standard/Platform: JDK 7
Synopsis: The GarbageFirst (G1) garbage collector is experimental in this release. Some command line tools, such as jstack or jmap, may not work properly when using the G1 collector.
RFE: 6966967

Area: HotSpot
Standard/Platform: JDK 7
Synopsis: In previous releases of the JDK on Solaris only, the Thread.interrupt() method would interrupt some blocking I/O operatons resulting in InterruptedIOException thrown by the target thread and leaving socket or file streams in an inconsistent state. This so called "legacy interruptible I/O support" has been disabled in JDK 7. Applications that previously relied on this Solaris specific behavior can re-enable this support by running with the following option on the command line: -XX:+UseVMInterruptibleIO. A future release of the JDK may remove the legacy interruptible I/O support completely.
RFE: 6554406


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