Java Numeric Working Group from Java Grande

The goals of the Numeric Working Group of the Java Grande Forum are (1) to assess the suitability of Java for numerical computation, (2) to work towards community consensus on actions which can be taken to overcome deficiencies of the language and its run-time environment, and (3) to encourage the development of APIs for core mathematical operations. The Group hosts open meetings and other forums to discuss these issues. The recent efforts of Java Numeric Working Group are true multidimensional arrays, inclusion of static imports, Inclusion of facilities for automatic boxing and unboxing of primitive types, Inclusion of enhanced for loops (i.e., foreach), Improvements in java.lang.Math, Multiarray Package, and etc. Especially, the HPJava language contributes to true multidimensional arrays and its syntax on Java. Jose Moreira, etc, provided an update on the progress of Java Specification Request (JSR) 83 on multiarrays, and especially adopted the same syntax as HPJava distributed arrays and true multi-dimensional arrays. A multiarray is a rectangular multidimensional array whose shape and extents are fixed. Such arrays admit compiler optimizations that Java arrays of arrays do not. That is, with multiarrays, Java can achieve very high-performance for numerical computing through the use of compiler techniques and efficient implementation of array operations. As one of the Java Numeric Working Group members, I believe that the endless efforts will make Java (language specification, run-time environments, and its compiler) a better and more adaptable language for Grid Computing environments.