
A tradition at JavaWorld since 1997, the Editors' Choice Awards (ECA) honors companies, organizations, and individuals for their efforts in driving Java forward. The event always begins with a selection process; this year, vendors, readers, and JavaWorld authors and editors nominated tools and technologies in the following 10 categories:
Any commercial, open source, or free Java-based technology shipped on or before March 31, 2001, could be nominated. Beta versions were not eligible.
A panel of nine judges, all of them JavaWorld authors, voted in several rounds to narrow the more than 100 nominations to three finalists in each category. The panel then went through yet another round of voting to choose the winners. In making their final decisions, the judges thoroughly evaluated the features and functions of each technology or tool and its influence on Java.
The several weeks of nominations and voting culminated last night at the Ansel Adams Center. JavaWorld columnist Frank Sommers, founder and CEO of AutoSpaces and an ECA judge, kicked off the event with an address on future Java-based technologies. Afterwards, JavaWorld editors presented the awards to each of the 10 winners. All winners and finalists received an Awards crystal acknowledging their accomplishment.
Without further ado ... the winners of the JavaWorld 2001 Editors' Choice Awards:
Sun Microsystems' Java HotSpot VM architecture combines a high-tech memory model, garbage collector, and adaptive optimizer with a sophisticated object-oriented style. Featuring a uniform object model, rapid thread synchronization, and system-specific runtime routines generated at VM startup time, the Java HotSpot VM was designed to deliver top performance and reliability.
"One should commend Sun for implementing VMs for many different platforms," notes Sommers. "The HotSpot engine provides very high performance and great stability."
Updated from version 1.0.1, Java HotSpot Server VM 2.0 features improvements in runtime and garbage collection, as well as enhancements to the Java HotSpot Client VM and Server VM optimizations. New runtime capabilities include enhanced fatal-error reporting, improved support for debugging and profiling, and a unified source base. Version 2.0's garbage collectors feature larger heaps, a better soft reference policy, and support for larger applications.