On March 8, Tencent announced Tencent KonaJDK11 officially open source, to the community to share by internal vlsi production validation custom JDK, this version in the startup performance, peak performance and the ability to handle things, relative to the previous version Kona JDK8 have comprehensive promotion, Deep optimization of Tencent big data team in big data/machine learning, cloud native scenarios, and through JCK verification, to ensure full compatibility with Java SE standards.

In addition to being available in the open source community, TencentKona JDK11 will also be available for free on Tencent Cloud, injecting efficient momentum into Java applications for cloud users. On the other hand, by using Kona JDK in its own products, Tencent Cloud can also bring better cloud service capabilities to users.

As the foundation engine of the Java ecosystem, the JDK includes the Java runtime environment, Java tools, and Java core class libraries. At present, based on the OpenJDK open source project (one of the most mainstream reference implementation of Java SE), international manufacturers have developed a variety of JDK distributions, Tencent Kona JDK is one of the most characteristic distributions.

Efficient and reliable open source version of JDK11 out of the box

In order to give users a better VERSION of JDK11 and reduce maintenance costs, Tencent Big Data JVM team in Kona JDK11, adhere to the consistent compatibility, reliability, security, performance optimization and other core elements, at the same time, focus on the ZGC and other core features of the production level improvement, so that out of the box, including:

  • Vector computation (Vector API). In view of the optimization requirements of “computing power” in big data and machine learning scenarios, JVM applications can make full use of SIMD capabilities, transplant and improve Vector API technology in the cutting-edge version of the community, solve production obstacles such as avX512 Vector reliability, and develop in-depth optimization such as Vector shift register allocation. And a lot of upstream has been optimized to the OpenJDK main branch.
  • ZGC out of the box. As one of the Java ecology’s eagerly awaited “no pause” GC algorithms, ZGC promises to provide millisecond pauses in most cases, greatly increasing the productivity of Java online service scenarios, but somewhat slowing down JDK 11 adoption due to its lack of reliability and functionality. The Kona JDK addresses the shortcomings of the community JDK 11, freeing Java developers from the burden of choosing between LTS and non-LTS versions.
  • Super large heap and memory cost optimization strategies. The Kona JDK 11 incorporates production-level optimizations for GC, SVC tools, and more in the face of demanding production environments ranging from lightweight microservices to multiple super TERabytes of stacks.

In November 2019, Tencent Big Data JVM team opened open source TencentKona JDK8, which provides the optimal Java production environment and solutions for micro-services, cloud native applications, big data and other practical application scenarios, and provides smooth migration for Java applications developed by developers. At present, Kona provides stable guarantee for large-scale products such as Tencent Big data, Tencent cloud micro-service platform TSF, EMR, big data suite TBDS, intelligent titanium machine learning platform Ti-One, messaging middleware, and proprietary cloud TCE.

According to the industry standard Benchmark, Kona JDK11 has a very significant improvement in peak performance compared to Kona JDK8 in most scenarios, with individual performance improvement approaching 50%. At present, Kona JDK11 general version has been used in Tencent internal and cloud scale, users only need a small amount of migration work, can realize its compilation and operation in Kona JDK11 version.

For the vast majority of Java users, it’s time to seriously consider upgrading from 8 to new LTS versions such as Kona 11. It is understood that a considerable number of Java users face no small difficulty in upgrading JDK 11 and adopting cutting-edge features. Tencent JVM team will open source production level ZGC and other capabilities, and share production practices of big data, advertising, games, finance, cloud security gateway and other scenarios to a wide range of Java developers. Help users to solve the concerns of upgrading the JDK.

Continue to contribute, adhere to the benign feedback open source

Since December 2019, when we officially participated in OpenJDK community contribution, Tencent Big Data JVM team has been adhering to the principle of contributing to the long-term success of Java, committed to solving the shortcomings of Java language and JVM, and participated in promoting the evolution of Java ecology.

In less than a year, The Tencent Big Data JVM team has contributed 70+commits to the OpenJDK community, sharing some commits in big data, machine learning, cloud computing and other production load technologies. Among them, the improvement of VectorAPI vector calculation, Loom coroutine, ZGC and other aspects is a rare production level frontier practice in the industry.

It is worth mentioning that, in September last year, Oracle officially released JDK 15 and published the global Contributor list of OpenJDK. Tencent ranked fifth in global enterprise contribution, the company that contributes the most to OpenJDK in China, and it is the first time that a Chinese manufacturer enters into the contributor range of OpenJDK. Got the community official roll call thanks.

In the future, Tencent big Data JVM team will continue to participate in OpenJDK and other open source community collaboration, contribute more cutting-edge improvements, and improve user and developer experience.