A distributed runtime for Java: Yesterday and today

Abstract

Since the introduction of the Java language less then a decade ago, there have been several attempts to create a runtime system for distributed execution of multithreaded Java applications. The goal of these attempts was to gain increased computational power while preserving Java's convenient parallel programming paradigm. This paper gives a detailed overview of the existing distributed runtime systems for Java and presents a new approach, implemented in a system called JavaSplit. Unlike previous works, which either forfeit Java's portability or introduce unconventional programming constructs, JavaSplit is able to execute standard multithreaded Java while preserving portability. JavaSplit works by rewriting the bytecodes of a given parallel application, transforming it into a distributed application that incorporates all the runtime logic. Each runtime node carries out its part of the resulting distributed computation using nothing but its local standard (unmodified) Java Virtual Machine (JVM).