Hewlett-Packard Co has gone to Austin, Texas-based Tower Technology Corp for its super-fast TowerJ Java compiler technology in order to speed up HP’s development of a Java environment for its HP-UX version of Unix. HP has been developing its own Java Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler, which it demonstrated at last year’s JavaOne conference in April, but has never shipped and little has been heard of it since then.
HP was also the principal financier of the Open Group’s Turbo-J Java compiler, which was being developed for HP-UX ahead of all other platforms. Turbo-J has been available on HP-UX since last fall, and is viewed by HP’s Java program manager Sara Jacobson as strategic. But now HP intends to mix its own Java blend with that of Tower.
HP says elements of Tower’s TowerJ compiler – the first version of which was also launched at last year’s JavaOne – will be integrated with HP’s Java compiler work being done at its Cupertino laboratory.
HP has licensed all Tower’s compiler technology, which is not a JIT, but instead isolates Java byte codes that have changed and converts them into native executables. The technology is currently in the early access program for version 2.0, which supports the latest available cut of Java, version 1.1.
Jacobson could not identify what in particular drew HP to Tower, other than its performance. Version 1.0 has been shipping since April last year, and HP-UX has always been one of the platforms it supports. However, it does not come cheap, with typical implementations costing around $100,000.
Jacobson says that in time, HP will look at ways of integrating the Open Group’s Turbo-J with its own work and that of Tower’s, but right now it wants to offer a choice. When asked why HP needs to have all these different Java compilers, Jacobson said Turbo-J is the only one currently widely available. TowerJ is out, but not widely available and supporting JDK 1.1. Jacobson declined to detail any timetable for TowerJ’s integration into HP’s compiler.
The third version of TowerJ, slated for this summer, will convert any combination of Java source code or byte code into dynamic executables, according to the company.
