Java’s performance is often a topic of discussion, particularly its startup time and memory footprint. GraalVM Native Image has emerged as a powerful tool to address these concerns, allowing developers to compile Java code ahead-of-time (AOT) into native executables. With the release of GraalVM 24.1.0, several enhancements further boost the performance of native images, making them even more attractive for various applications.

This latest release doesn’t introduce a single, monolithic feature called “Java Native Image Performance Enhancements.” Instead, it incorporates a collection of optimizations across the compilation and runtime stages that contribute to overall performance gains. Let’s explore some of these key improvements:

Java 20 was released on March 21, 2023. It is a short-term release supported for six months, following the September 20 release of JDK 19. JDK 21, due in September, will be a long-term support (LTS) release, backed by multiple years of support.

New features in Java 20:

• Record Patterns (Second Preview): This feature enhances the Java programming language with record patterns to deconstruct record values. Record patterns and type patterns can be nested to enable a powerful, declarative, and composable form of data navigation and processing.
• Pattern Matching for Switch Statements and Expressions (Fourth Preview): This feature extends pattern matching to express more sophisticated, composable data queries in switch statements and expressions.
• Foreign Function and Memory API (Second Preview): This API introduces an API by which Java programs can interoperate with code and data outside of the Java runtime.
• Scoped Values (Incubator): This feature introduces scoped values, which enable the sharing of immutable data within and across threads.
• Virtual Threads (Incubator): This feature provides a lightweight, non-blocking thread abstraction that can be used to improve the performance and scalability of concurrent applications.
• Vector API (Proposal): This API provides a high-performance, efficient way to operate on arrays of primitive data types.
• Unicode 15.0 Support: This release includes support for Unicode 15.0, which includes new characters and emoji.
• Improved Control of G1 Concurrent Refinement Threads: This release includes improvements to the G1 garbage collector, which can improve the performance of concurrent applications.
• Support for CLDR Version 42: This release includes support for CLDR Version 42, which provides locale data for over 150 languages.

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