The first thing to understand is that Java is a set of APIs for telephony, network, relational database and graphics applications in addition to the rather simple business widgets like edit boxes, buttons, lists, spreadsheets, et cetera. They will start to release these services next year. Java is sercure, reliable layer of services built from the ground up for today's distributed environments. Java is also a virtual machine, and that's the important observation insofar as AMD is concerned. It doesn't interpret as much as it translates code from a virtual instruction set to a target instruction set. That translation can be done on-the-fly or just-in-time (JIT) and then cached. Moreover, that translation can be done way-ahead-of-time (WAT) as is done with every other compiled language we have today. The WAT source is still just as portable, you don't break anything, you just decide to use a static version of the application on your local machine and you don't care about automatic-upgrades. That's precisely how C++ apps are handled now: install the application once and upgrade at your leisure. The final and probably least important piece of the puzzle is that Java is also a modern, object-oriented language. It turns out that writing Java applications is easier than C++ because they insist on managing allocation and recovery of resources and they have all but eliminated the need for pointers -- something which the average C/C++ has no difficulty using and probably doesn't even think about, but that is also responsible for a large percentage of serious bugs.
So there you have it, Java will replace the Windows API while corporations sinking under the weight of Microsoft bloatware are refloated onto the Java virtual machine. It has been demonstrated, categorically, that more effective applications can be developed in less time with less support costs and way smaller footprints than Microsoft has done. Is that a surpise? One last thing, several days ago, Sun was approved as the keeper of the Java flame by the International Standards Organization. That single event ensured that Java will evolve as a world-wide standard, initially under the watchful eye of Sun. Thin is in, AMD cannot afford to ignore Java. |
