Use of Profilers for Studying Java Dynamic Optimizations

Java differs from many common programming languages in that Java programs are first compiled to platform-independent bytecode. Java bytecode is run by a program called the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Because of this approach, Java programs are often optimized dynamically (i.e. at run-time) by the JVM. A Just-In-Time compiler (JIT) is a part of the JVM that performs dynamic optimizations. The research goal is to be able to detect and study dynamic optimizations performed by a JIT using a profiler. A profiler is a programming tool that can track the performance of another program.