advanced~3h
GraalVM and Modern JVM Choices
A practical look at ahead-of-time compilation with GraalVM native-image versus the standard JIT, the startup-time and memory tradeoffs that decide which one a team should actually ship, and a short survey of other modern JVM options (checkpoint-restore, alternative JVM implementations) worth knowing about even if you never reach for them.
Learning objectives
- Explain the structural difference between the JIT's just-in-time compilation and GraalVM native-image's ahead-of-time compilation
- Articulate the startup-time/memory versus peak-throughput tradeoff between native-image and a warmed-up JIT
- Identify concrete scenarios (serverless functions, CLI tools, aggressively autoscaled containers) where native-image is the right call
- Identify concrete scenarios (long-running, high-throughput services) where the standard JIT still wins
- Describe what CRaC (checkpoint-restore) and OpenJ9 offer as alternative answers to the same startup problem
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GraalVM and Modern JVM Choices