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HotSpot Internals

This wiki is written by and owned by the HotSpot Group.  It is written for programmers working on the HotSpot JVM system. This includes programmers of systems which generate JVM bytecodes (i.e., language implementorsimplementers).

In order to be able to edit pages in this wiki, please read the blog post explaining how to become an editor.

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you must be a member of the HotSpot Group.  Please read the FAQ entry for the OpenJDK wikis which explains the editing rules.

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Intentions and non-intentions

This wiki contains:

• An architectural guide to the Runtime, Compiler, GC, Serviceability, etc.
• Details on performance techniques.
• A place to document likely future work (major refactorings or cleanups, new optimizations, etc.).
• Links to relevant email discussion threads, e.g., on the Hotspot compiler-dev list.
• Quick links to similar information in other places on the web.
  • http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/hotspot ("Java SE HotSpot at a Glance")
  • http://openjdk.java.net/groups/hotspot/ (OpenJDK HotSpot Project home)
  • HotSpot-related research at the Johannes Kepler University Linz
• Information which, once written, is expected to remain accurate and relevant, as long as the related code remains stable.

Please look for the following types of information elsewhere:

• Not an introduction or quick-start for working on the JVM. (TO DO: Put links here.) general project information.
• Not a developers guideNot build instructions.
• Not a substitute for comments in the source code.
• Not a list of bugs or tasks.
• Not a blog, forum, or the comments section thereof.

Interesting tasks to do

• Extract links and info. from messages and blog postings, especially via hotspot-dev@openjdk.
• Extract links and info. from historical Oracle/Sun mailing lists and wikis. (Sun engineers have to do this!)
• Write down understandings of major modules as they are (re-)acquired from trips through the code.

Who writes this wiki?

• We are using the Community Write pattern.
• There is no public write access, except for leaving page comments. You must be registered and logged in to leave comments.
• Please do add page comments when a page should answer your question but doesn't. (That means, potentially on any page.)
• The most effective page comments will include links to relevant email discussion threads, e.g., on the Hotspot compiler-dev list.
• Any member of the OpenJDK Hotspot Group or a related group should feel free to contribute.
• Actually, anybody with a (demonstrable) working knowledge of the Hotspot internals will be welcome to contribute content.
• Write permissions are not automatic until and unless the DBs get on speaking terms. If you think you should have write permission and don't contact the wiki administrator.