HP has been offering Java as a supported 3000 compiler for much of 1999, but it doesn’t expect the bundled language to get speed increases needed for wider production use until sometime later this year.

The Java roadmap offered in the fall for HP 3000 systems proposed a beta test version of the new HotSpot compiler technology for Java/iX in the fourth quarter of 1999. But with that roadmap already running off course, 3000 sites shouldn’t expect to see extensive speed increases until later this year.

HotSpot is a newer version of the Java Virtual Machine, software that promises to lift the performance of a language that has suffered from performance concerns through its 1.1 and 1.2 releases. HotSpot is “a re-architecting of the Java VM, probably the most interesting thing of all that we’re porting,” said Mike Yawn, the HP engineer in charge of developing the language. “Sun said that if they started over with a clean sheet of paper [on the VM], they can do something a lot faster.” Java users shouldn’t have to change any existing code to take advantage of the faster VM, he added.

At the same time, HP is working on native threading patches that it will put into its Just In Time (JIT) compiler technology first integrated in the current shipping version of Java/iX. That 1.2 version also has a 1.2.2 version in beta test today, but HP’s roadmap didn’t expect to get any performance help from HotSpot or native threading until the 1.2.3 version of Java/iX.

“The JIT technology moves forward fast, too,” Yawn said. “As long as we get the performance, I don’t care where it comes from,” Yawn said. This speed-improved Java for the 3000 won’t be shipping until after the 6.5 release of MPE/iX, in an Express release.

At the last HP World conference, Yawn said despite the fact that a regular group of about 30 customers communicates with him about Java on the 3000, he sees even more interest at user meetings.

“When I come to something like this, people who I’ve never heard of talk about what they’re doing with Java,” he said. Customers are making enhancements to the TurboIMAGE class libraries for Java, for example.

Some commercial developers of 3000 applications are eyeing Java as an addition to their COBOL source code. “We’re finding it difficult to find COBOL programmers,” said Duane Percox of Quintessential School Systems. “We’re really considering how to tap into the talent pool of the next 10 years. The only way to do that is to look at languages that will have legs, and Java appears to have legs.”

Percox, one of the active members of the COBOL special interest group and a founder of K-12 administration solution supplier QSS, said Java’s compatibility with networking is a bonus.

“It’s a lot easier to get a Java app to do sockets than to do it in COBOL,” Percox said. “I can take anyone who knows Java and have then do a socket client server implementation in a matter of hours. In a COBOL environment, people just don’t think that way, and it makes it more difficult to implement those kind of solutions.”

Yawn said the HotSpot technology won’t get into the MPE/iX 6.5 release or the forthcoming MPE/iX 6.0 Express 2 release. “The HotSpot performance could be two to five times faster” than the current Java release.