Microsoft ports open source Java to Windows 10 on ARM

Initial changes by Microsoft’s Java Engineering Group and Red Hat will be upstreamed to the OpenJDK project

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Image: Fancycrave / IDG News Service

Microsoft’s Java Engineering Group has reported progress in porting OpenJDK, or open source Java, to Windows 10 on ARM64-based devices, having completed the first phase of the initiative in late June. The company’s initial changes are being upstreamed to the OpenJDK project itself.

The port has been submitted to OpenJDK in partnership with Red Hat. An early access binary is available via GitHub. Microsoft said it has seen increased adoption of ARM64 on laptops and servers, with the architecture offering higher energy efficiency in data centres and battery life extension on personal devices.

While not yet feature-complete, the port is based on the OpenJDK tip branch and can run reference workloads including SPEC SERT and the SPEC Java suites. Developers can start building with Java on Windows 10 ARM64-compatible laptops, with core Java extensions in Visual Studio Code for ARM64, along with tools such as Apache Maven and Gradle.

Microsoft’s OpenJDK porting effort has been driven in part by its 2019 acquisition of jClarity. The acquisition prompted the formation of the Java Engineering Group in the company’s Developer Division. Also announcing ARM news recently was Microsoft rival Apple, with plans to make its own CPUs for Macs based on the ARM instruction set, a move lauded by Linux creator Linus Torvalds.

IDG News Service

Read More: ARM Java Microsoft open source software development Windows 10