Creating Java to Native Code Interfaces with Janet

Abstract

Java is growing in appropriateness and usability for high performance computing. With this increasing adoption, issues relating to combining Java with existing codes in other languages become more important. The Java Native Interface (JNI) API is portable but too inconvenient to be used directly owing to its low-level API. This paper presents Janet — a highly expressive Java language extension and preprocessing tool that enables convenient integration of native code with Java programs. The Janet methodology overcomes some of the limitations of JNI and generates Java programs that execute with little or no degradation despite the flexibility and generality of the interface.