JavaOne 2026 Session

Summary

Throughout the project, Vector API balanced providing cross-platform API while staying close to the metal performance-wise. The project succeeded at that goal, yet Vector API had to give up on some functionality that didn't fit the design. As a result, the API became unsuitable for implementing an important class of vectorized algorithms. With recent progress in Project Panama (on Foreign Function & Memory API and jextract), there are new opportunities emerging to bring Java even closer to hardware.

This talk covers how Vector API evolved and features success stories while pointing out cases where it fell short. The focus then shifts towards interactions with other APIs and tools (in particular, Foreign Function & Memory API and jextract). Lastly, future opportunities being explored in Project Panama and Project Babylon are covered (such as auto-vectorization through code reflection, vector calling convention support in FFM API, and hardware intrinsics in the JVM).