The Maxine Virtual Machine is an open source virtual machine

Virtual machine

A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...

 developed by Oracle Labs (formerly Sun Microsystems Laboratories

Sun Microsystems Laboratories

Sun Microsystems Laboratories, or Sun Labs was the research and development branch of Sun Microsystems. It was established in 1990 by Ivan Sutherland and Robert Sproull...

). The emphasis in Maxine's architecture is on modular design and code reuse in the name of flexibility, configurability, and productivity for industrial and academic virtual machine researchers. It is one of a growing number of Java Virtual Machine

Java Virtual Machine

A Java virtual machine is a virtual machine capable of executing Java bytecode. It is the code execution component of the Java software platform. Sun Microsystems stated that there are over 4.5 billion JVM-enabled devices.-Overview:...

s written entirely in Java in a meta-circular

Meta-circular evaluator

A meta-circular evaluator is a special case of a self-interpreter in which the existing facilities of the parent interpreter are directly applied to the source code being interpreted, without any need for additional implementation...

 style (for example, Squawk

Squawk virtual machine

Squawk is a Java micro edition virtual machine for embedded system and small devices. Most virtual machines for the Java platform are written in low level native languages such as C/C++ and assembler; what makes Squawk different is that Squawk's core is mostly written in Java...

 and Jikes RVM).

Architecture

The Maxine VM is characterized internally by aggressive use of advanced language features in Java 1.5 and 1.6, by modular subsystems coordinated through Java interfaces, and by the absence of an interpreter.

Compatibility

Maxine is plug-compatible with an unmodified JDK. Maxine can be developed, built, and run in standard Java IDEs, including Netbeans

NetBeans

NetBeans refers to both a platform framework for Java desktop applications, and an integrated development environment for developing with Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Groovy, C, C++, Scala, Clojure, and others...

, Eclipse

Eclipse

An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object is temporarily obscured, either by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer...

, and IntelliJ.

Systems programming in Java

A secondary goal of the project is development of methodologies and tools for "systems programming in Java". Compiler extensions, configured in VM source code using Java annotation

Java annotation

An annotation, in the Java computer programming language, is a special form of syntactic metadata that can be added to Java source code. Classes, methods, variables, parameters and packages may be annotated...

s, permit the use, without performance penalty, of low-level operations that are not otherwise allowed in Java.

The Maxine Inspector

Specialized debugging support for the Maxine VM is provided by the Maxine Inspector: a companion tool that acts as a combined object, class, and method browser, as well as a machine-level debugger. The Inspector runs out-of-process, requires no active VM support, and leverages code shared with the VM for specialized developer services.

See also

• List of Java virtual machines
• Squawk
  Squawk virtual machine
  Squawk is a Java micro edition virtual machine for embedded system and small devices. Most virtual machines for the Java platform are written in low level native languages such as C/C++ and assembler; what makes Squawk different is that Squawk's core is mostly written in Java...
  
  
• Jikes RVM

External links

• Maxine Project Home Page