Running multiple apps under the same JVM with JDistro

OnJava.com have an interview with the developers of JDisto, an app that allows multiple Java apps to run together in the same JVM instance.

The main benefit of this is to avoid the overhead of each app running in its own memory hungry JVM. However, with the tendency of large Java desktop apps to hang and crash after a period of time (IBMs WSAD and DB2 client tools come to mind), I wonder how stable this environment is in practice? Can they isolate one app from another so one hanging app doesn’t effect another?

Sony and Toshiba confirm new Cell CPU to be available 2005

Sony and Toshiba announced this week that products based on the new Cell CPU will be released next year, 2005

First product available will be a graphics workstation. High definition TVs will be released in 2006.

Sony and Toshiba will be presenting further technical info on the new CPU at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco in February 2005.

Sony have also confirmed that the next generation Playstation built around the Cell will be demo’d at E3 in May next year, although no official release date for the PS3 has yet been stated.

Sun to release ealry snapshot builds of future J2SE releases

Sun have started to release early builds of J2SE Mustang (1.6) on their java.net community site.

This will allow developers to get uptospeed with new features before the official GA version is released, and even before the Beta releases.

Currently the site has a “Build 12” release – the release notes look like they cover a lot of bug fixes but no new major features yet.

Although J2SE SDK development is still not Open Source (which some people would like), the site also releases the source code along with the binary builds so you can take a look at the source.