AMD wants graphics processors to run Java

LONDON – Microprocessor chip company Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has announced it is joining with Oracle Inc. to work on how Java can be accelerated by a mix of processor engines including graphics processor units (GPUs).

The announcement was made during a keynote at the JavaOne 2012 conference in San Francisco by Phil Rogers, AMD Corporate Fellow and president of the Heterogenous System Architecture (HSA) president.

[Get a 10% discount on ARM TechCon 2012 conference passes by using promo code EDIT. Click here to learn about the show and register.]

AMD, Oracle and other members of the OpenJDK community are forming Project Sumatra to help bring heterogeneous computing capabilities to Java for server and cloud computing environments. The project will explore how the Java Virtual Machine, the Java language and applications programming interfaces can allow applications to be accelerated by GPUs, either in discrete graphics cards or as found in mixed-processor systems such as accelerated processing units (APUs), AMD said.


Project Sumatra is an open source project in support of Java which is related to Aparapi, an API for data parallel Java and Rootbeer, a compiler that supports Java programming on GPUs. The project may also provide guidance on enabling heterogeneous compute support for other JVM-based languages such as Scala, JRuby and Jython.

"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 for the Java Platform Group at Oracle, in a statement issued by AMD.


Related links and articles:

openjdk.java.net

News articles:

AMD's HSA club recruits six more firms

AMD lands high-performance computing guru

AMD, ARM, Imagination, TI, MediaTek form HSA group