Compared to other v6 release the release of Java SE 1.6.0_18 is definitely worthy of note.
Major changes
- VisualVM 1.2
- Performance improvements
- 20% faster jar file creation
- Java Hotspot VM 16.0
- Improved NUMA-aware allocation giving a 30% (for 32-bit) to 40% (for 64-bit) increase in performance (which is due also to arrive in jdk7 as well)
- Garbage collection improvements including new default java heap configuration in client and server vms
- Classloading optimisations for faster startup
- Code generation improvements including elision of needless conversions between integer primitive types and optimisations of common string concatenation patterns
- Garbage First (G1) garbage collector improved reliability and performance
- New options to request a heap dump or class histogram before or after a full GC
- Escape analysis based optimisation which appeared in 6u14 has been disabled in 6u18 to be restored in a future update
Minor changes
- Support for Windows 7
- JavaDB 10.5.3.0
- Application startup improvements
- Runtime performance improvements for UI applications
- Ability to read larger zip files of size up to 4GB
As the community eagerly awaits Java 7 in Q4 of 2010 releases such as this one serve to provide a little excitement in the mean time. It’s interesting to see that certain features that are due to arrive with Java 7 are also being offered in Java 6 such as NUMA-aware allocation, G1 collector and escape analysis. For whatever reason escape analysis has been disabled in this release but no reason has been given – it would be interesting to know why.
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“It’s interesting to see that certain features that are due to arrive with Java 7 are also being offered in Java 6 such as NUMA-aware allocation, G1 collector and escape analysis. For whatever reason escape analysis has been disabled in this release but no reason has been given – it would be interesting to know why.”
Are you sure that this is so?
Hi Artenca. Thanks for stopping by. Which part of that paragraph are you contesting? What I’ve stated there is based on the release notes for that release.
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