JamVM is a new Java Virtual Machine which conforms to the JVM specification version 2 (blue book). In comparison to most other VM's (free and commercial) it is extremely small, with a stripped executable on PowerPC of only ~135K, and Intel 100K. However, unlike other small VMs (e.g. KVM) it is designed to support the full specification, and includes support for object finalisation, Soft/Weak/Phantom References, the Java Native Interface (JNI) and the Reflection API.

For those interested in the design of virtual machines, JamVM includes a number of optimisations to improve speed and reduce foot-print. A list, in no particular order, is given below.

• Uses native threading (posix threads). Full thread implementation including Thread.interrupt()
• Object references are direct pointers (i.e. no handles)
• Supports class loaders
• Efficient thin locks for fast locking in uncontended cases (the majority of locking) without using spin-locking
• Two word object header to minimise heap overhead (lock word and class pointer)
• Execution engine supports basic switched interpreter and threaded interpreter, to minimise dispatch overhead (requires gcc value labels)
• Stop-the-world mark and sweep garbage collector
• Thread suspension uses signals to reduce suspend latency and improve performance (no suspension checks during normal execution)
• Full object finalisation support within the garbage collector (with finaliser thread)
• Full support for Soft/Weak/Phantom References (with Reference Handler thread)
• Garbage collector can run synchronously or asynchronously within its own thread
• String constants within class files are stored in hash table to minimise class data overhead (string constants shared between all classes)
• Supports JNI and dynamic loading for use with standard libraries
• Uses its own lightweight native interface for internal native methods without overhead of JNI
• JamVM is written in C, with a small amount of platform dependent assembler, and is easily portable to other architectures.

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