OpenJDK 15 Reaches GA With Garbage Collector Promotions, Tossing Out Solaris + SPARC

Written by Michael Larabel in Oracle on 15 September 2020 at 12:07 PM EDT. 20 Comments
ORACLE
OpenJDK 15 is out today as the latest general availability release for this open-source Java implementation.

OpenJDK 15 as the open-source implementation of the Java SE 15 Platform brings many improvements and new features. Among the OpenJDK 15 highlights are:

- The Z Garbage Collector (ZGC) was promoted from being experimental since JDK 11 to now being a product feature. G1 remains the default garbage collector while this low-latency, scalable GC is available for those wanting to make use of it. In now being official, the UnlockExperimentalVMOptions argument is no longer needed but just -XX:+UseZGC for enabling.

- The Shenandoah low-pause-time garbage collector was also promoted to being a production feature.

- Support for text blocks in the Java language as a multi-line string literal that avoids the need for most escape sequences.

- Removal of Solaris support for SPARC and x86_64. The Linux SPARC support has been removed too... For OpenJDK it's game over for Solaris and SPARC after it was deprecated in JDK 14.

- Sealed classes are in preview form This allows restricting what other classics or interfaces may extend/implement the "sealed" classes/interfaces.

- Support for hidden classes as classes that cannot be used directly by the bytecode of other classes.

- Removal of the Nashorn JavaScript Engine.

- Support for cryptographic signatures using EdDSA (Edwards-Curve Digital Signature Algorithm).

- Better out-of-the-box performance in select configurations.

There are also many other improvements with OpenJDK 15. More details and downloads via openjdk.java.net.
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