With the diffusion of Java in advanced multimedia mobile devices, there is a growing need for speeding up the execution of Java Bytecode beyond the limits of traditional interpreters and just-in-time compilers. In this area, Java coprocessors are viewed as a promising technology, which marries the flexibility of a general purpose microprocessor to run legacy code and lightweight Java methods, with the high performance of a specialized execution engine on speed-critical bytecode. This work proposes and analyzes a microprocessor with FPGA coprocessor architecture with efficient shared-memory communication support. Furthermore, we describe a complete run-time environment that supports dynamic migration of Java methods to the coprocessor, and we quantitatively analyze speedups achievable under a number of system configurations using an accurate complete-system simulator.
Citation:
Emanuele Lattanzi, Aman Gayasen, Mahmuth Kandemir, Vijaykrishnan Narayanan, Luca Benini, Alessandro Bogliolo, "Improving Java Performance Using Dynamic Method Migration on FPGAs," ipdps, vol. 4, pp.134b, 18th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS'04) - Workshop 3, 2004