Will Java go native?

[Chris]

On Wednesday, 18 September 2013 at 22:33:46 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Wednesday, 18 September 2013 at 22:24:08 UTC, Paulo Pinto 
> wrote:
>> Am 18.09.2013 23:33, schrieb Chris:
>>> Seeing that more and more developers and companies look for 
>>> or actively
>>> develop native languages, I wonder will Java go native one 
>>> day? (Cf.
>>> http://docs.oracle.com/cd/A97336_01/buslog.102/a83727/jtools5.htm)
>>>
>>> Is this Java's only chance to keep up with Go and Rust (and 
>>> D)?
>>> Performance is an issue, no matter how fast your processor 
>>> is, Java
>>> always lags behind*. And the JVM installation horror is bad 
>>> enough for
>>> developers, but for users? Now Java apps are often shipped 
>>> with a
>>> version of the JRE included, which smells of defeat. If 
>>> Oracle want to
>>> save Java (after so many "unfortunate" decisions), will they 
>>> finally go
>>> native? I can see a market for that. There are still a lot of 
>>> Java
>>> developers out there, there are loads of Java apps, Java has 
>>> GUI
>>> libraries etc.
>>>
>>> *Java's sluggish performance was what made me look for 
>>> alternatives in
>>> the first place, and I found D.
>>
>> Java is already native, don't confuse languages with 
>> implementations.
>>
>> Just because the reference implementation happens to be VM 
>> only, it does not mean all Java vendors offer plain VMs.
>>
>> Here are some native compilers for Java and JVMs that do AOT 
>> compilation as option:
>>
>> http://www.excelsior-usa.com/jet.html
>>
>> http://www.atego.com/products/aonix-perc/
>>
>> http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/real-time/
>>
>> http://www.robovm.org/
>>
>> http://jikesrvm.org/
>>
>> http://www.aicas.com/sites/jamaica.html
>>
>> http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/javasdk/v6r0/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.java.doc.diagnostics.60%2Fdiag%2Fappendixes%2Fcmdline%2Fcommands_jit.html
>>
>> --
>> Paulo
>
> I've heard of excelsior ($2,500+) and other implementations. 
> Sorry, I meant that it will be native as part of the Java SE 
> package, just as D ships with dmd.

Thanks for the links, btw. This all shows that there is a serious 
demand for Java as native code (cf. "The RoboVM compiler 
translates Java bytecode into native ARM or x86 code. Apps run 
directly on the CPU. No interpreter or virtual machine involved.")