Microsoft Corp has lost no time complying with the preliminary injunction won against it by Sun Microsystems Inc in the San Jose courts last month. The ruling ordered Microsoft to change all new Java products shipped so that they pass Sun compatibility tests within 90 days (CI No 3,541). Yesterday, on the eve of the launch of Sun’s own new Java virtual machine, Microsoft upgraded its JVM for Windows to include support for Sun’s Java Native Interface APIs, in addition to its own J/Direct and RNI Raw Native Interfaces. Support for JNI was also added to JVM for Windows shipped with the Internet Explorer browsers. At the same time, Microsoft added an enhanced version of its JIT just-in-time compiler, which it claims will keep its performance lead of 30% compared with the most recent offerings from its competitors. It wasn’t clear at press time whether or not this definition includes the virtual machine within Sun’s JDK 1.2, to be launched today, but already widely seeded among developers. Microsoft’s JIT work is being masterminded by Peter Kukol, one of the key technicians who worked on Turbo C at Borland International Inc in the 1980s. According to an email from Sun Microsystems Inc’s Chet Silvestri to SunSoft chief Alan Baratz and Sun CEO Scott McNealy quoted at the trial last week, Kukol is to compilation technology as Dave Cutler [the ex Digital Equipment Corp engineer who wrote VMS before moving to Microsoft to head the NT team] is to OS technology. Silvestri admitted in the 1996 email that Microsoft’s technology was two-to-three times faster across the board and blows the Borland JIT Java away. The new release also adds further support for Microsoft’s Component Object Model, along with Y2K and euro support. Both can be downloaded from the web immediately, for no charge.
