JAIP-MP: A Four-Core Java Application Processor

Abstract

In this paper, we present the design of a four-core Java application processor, JAIP-MP. Each processor core in JAIP-MP is a hardwired Java core that supports dynamic class loading, two-fold bytecode execution, object-oriented dynamic resolution, method and object caching, Java exception handling, and temporal multithreading. For JAIP-MP, a global load-balancing task manager is used to evenly distribute Java threads among the local task queues of every processor cores. In addition, a data coherence controller is designed to enforce coherence across all data caches and to perform synchronization operations among Java threads of all processor cores. Since thread management and synchronization mechanisms are completely implemented in hardware, the single-core multi-tasking performance of JAIP-MP is much higher than that of a software-based VM running on a traditional OS kernel such as Linux. For execution of multithreading applications, the speedup of a four-core JAIP-MP system can be up to 3.69 times faster than a single-core JAIP system, tested using the JemBench parallel benchmark programs.