Java port eyed for RISC-V hardware

Port of the JVM to the open-source licensed instruction set architecture could be ready later this year, if project gets approval to proceed.

The RISC-V hardware instruction set would get a full-featured port of open source Java, under a proposal being discussed in the OpenJDK community this week.  

If the project is approved, the port might be ready for Java Development Kit (JDK) 18, which is expected to arrive in September. Plans presently call for supporting Java on Linux on RISC-V; the base RV64G ISA (instruction set architecture) would be supported, along with vector operations.

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Contributors to the project include Huawei, Alibaba, and Red Hat. The proposal states Huawei already has a complete RISC-V port based on a snapshot of the OpenJDK mainline from May 2021. Huawei’s port has passed some JTReg tests and should be good enough to run most Java programs, according to the proposal. Support for vector operations is still experimental, with more testing needed. Source code would be rebased to the latest JDK mainline before integration into the JDK mainline.

RISC-V is an open-source licensed, royalty-free instruction set architecture for computing platforms ranging from embedded systems to enterprise servers. It leverages 47 base instructions, with users able to modularly add extensions for their specific designs. Participants in the RISC-V project have included companies such as Google, Nvidia, Rambus, and Samsung.