Networking of JVMs

[pradeepkumar.te]

Can the Java Virtual Machines can be networked as the real physical
machines are done?

 

[Matt Humphrey]

Can the Java Virtual Machines can be networked as the real physical
machines are done?

How many moons does it take to make a chocolate moon pie? The JVM is a
software system and cannot be logically compared to physical hardware. It
supports networked applications (or, you could say, its libraries do) but
does not itself have to be network-aware and certainly cannot have cables
plugged into it.

Is there some reason you need a physically-networked JVM rather than a
typical software network system?

Cheers,
Matt Humphrey (e-mail address removed) http://www.iviz.com/

 

[Chris Uppal]

Is there some reason you need a physically-networked JVM rather than a
typical software network system?

And how do you plug a network card into a computer program (the JVM) ?

;-)

-- chris

 

[pradeepkumar.te]

How many moons does it take to make a chocolate moon pie? The JVM is a
software system and cannot be logically compared to physical hardware. It
supports networked applications (or, you could say, its libraries do) but
does not itself have to be network-aware and certainly cannot have cables
plugged into it.

Is there some reason you need a physically-networked JVM rather than a
typical software network system?

Cheers,
Matt Humphrey (e-mail address removed) http://www.iviz.com/

Why don't you look at the JVM as a Chip so that they can be
networked...I think it is feasible.

Pradeep

 

[Matt Humphrey]

Why don't you look at the JVM as a Chip so that they can be
networked...I think it is feasible.

It is feasible (just check Google)--it's not meaningful to network them.
Neither the JLS nor the JVM Spec has any notion of being networked--there
are no semantics for "networked JVMs". Having hardware JVMs does not
automatically mean that they can be networked. Even building a JVM out of
distributed components does not automatically make JVM networking meaningful
either.

What you're describing is possible only if you redefine the JVM spec to
specify what networked JVMs means. You could then make whatever claims you
like about what is or is not possible. IMO, the current spec seems
perfectly capable of supporting networked applications without requiring
JVMs being networked.

Cheers,
Matt Humphrey (e-mail address removed) http://www.iviz.com/

 

[pradeepkumar.te]

It is feasible (just check Google)--it's not meaningful to network them.
Neither the JLS nor the JVM Spec has any notion of being networked--there
are no semantics for "networked JVMs". Having hardware JVMs does not
automatically mean that they can be networked. Even building a JVM out of
distributed components does not automatically make JVM networking meaningful
either.

What you're describing is possible only if you redefine the JVM spec to
specify what networked JVMs means. You could then make whatever claims you
like about what is or is not possible. IMO, the current spec seems
perfectly capable of supporting networked applications without requiring
JVMs being networked.

Cheers,
Matt Humphrey (e-mail address removed) http://www.iviz.com/

Thanks for the information.

Can the JVM chips be made work with other main processors which can be
networked?

Thanks,
Pradeep

 

[Chris Uppal]

Can the JVM chips be made work with other main processors which can be
networked?

I don't think there are any Java chips anymore are there ? In any case, even
if a chip is designed (and I think they /dd/ exist once) to execute the JVM
bytecode set, just executing that bytecode doesn't in itself make the chip into
a JVM -- there's a great deal of extra logic (method lookup, for instance)
which is needed to make a complete runtime platform.

I'm really not sure what you mean by "networking" a processor. You may mean
"can they be assembled into clusters with more-or-less shared memory ?", or you
may mean "can they be connected to a LAN ?". I have never heard of a Java chip
intended to be clustered (doesn't mean they didn't exist), so I'll assume the
latter. /Any/ chip can be networked, since that is a property of the device it
is part of, not of the chip itself. For instance, if I were building a
hand-held computer which ran Java "on the metal" (not an especially good idea,
IMO), then presumably I'd also put networking hardware in the same box, and my
implementation of the sockets/NIO part of the Java Standard Platform would talk
in a hardware-specific way to that.

-- chris

 

[Matt Humphrey]

Thanks for the information.

Can the JVM chips be made work with other main processors which can be
networked?

You'll have to check Google to see what state that technology is in.

Cheers,
Matt Humphrey (e-mail address removed) http://www.iviz.com/