Sun Microsystems Inc has bought a present for its JavaSoft Inc subsidiary in the shape of Longview Technologies LLC, trading out of Palo Alto as Animorphic Systems for an undisclosed cash sum. Animorphic has been working on a virtual machine it calls HotSpot for both Java and Smalltalk which it claims gives it performance enhancements of two times for all other Java VM technology and 3.5 times for Smalltalk VMs. The clever bit is what Animorphic calls an inline global optimizer that monitors programs as they run and looks for performance-sensitive regions which it can adapt for better performance. Not only that, says Animorphic, but the techniques make it better for higher-level code, which is, of course, more re-usable. It also features what the company claims is the first commercial non-disruptive garbage collector of long- lived objects. JavaSoft was keeping its new employees on a very tight leash regarding what Animorphic has been doing for two years since it started with private financing in December, as it is all its major announcements up for its JavaOne developers conference in San Francisco in early April, but the stuff’s out there to be found anyhow. The seven-person Animorphic team has joined JavaSoft already. Coincidentally, according to JavaSoft VP marketing David Spenhoff, yesterday was also the day the full version of JavaSoft’s JDK 1.1 became available from the company’s website. It includes an enhanced Abstract Windows Toolkit (AWT), JavaBeans components, a javac compiler, JavaBeans-to-ActiveX bridge and foundation classes. The encryption APIs JavaSoft had promised with the JDK release are still being worked on, said Spenhoff. The Animorphic stuff will feature in the next cut of JDK.
