Proposed JEP - Deprecate the Windows x86-32 Port

[Glavo]

I have seen many Intel Celeron N/J machines with memory <4GiB. Although
x86-32 is old, its non-heap memory footprint is lower, so it works better
under resource constraints.

And although Windows 11 does not provide 32-bit images, as far as I know,
Microsoft does not plan to give up support for running 32-bit programs on
64-bit systems.
32-bit programs are still an important part of Windows, a large number of
programs are still 32-bit.
For a considerable number of client applications, upgrading to 64-bit has
only negative benefits.
They only need a little memory and are not sensitive to performance.
What will 64-bit bring to them? Higher resource consumption and poor
compatibility (cannot run on x86-32 or Windows 10 on Arm systems)

I know that maintaining a port requires a lot of manpower, so I can't ask
you to do anything. But I really hope it will continue to be maintained.


On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 3:15 AM Alan Bateman <Alan.Bateman at oracle.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On 27/02/2023 11:04, George Adams wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I’ve been asked to socialize my proposed JEP to deprecate the Windows
> x86-32 port on this mailing list.
>
>
>
> A link to the draft JEP can be found here:
> https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8303167
>
>
>
> In summary, the main motivation for this JEP is that there is currently no
> implementation of JEP 436 (Virtual Threads) <https://openjdk.org/jeps/436> for
> 32-bit platforms and without a vendor stepping forward to implement this
> it's unlikely that OpenJDK will be able to continue supporting 32-bit
> architectures. Another motivation is that Windows 10 (the last Windows
> operating system to support a 32-bit installation) will reach EOL on
> October 14, 20251.
>
> When you build JDK 19+ to target windows-x86 then it will use an
> alternative implementation of virtual thread that creates a kernel thread
> for each virtual thread. So it doesn't scale but it's good enough for Zero
> and ports that are a bit behind.
>
> That said, it's a good topic to bring up. I don't expect dropping
> windows-x86 will remove the burden of keeping the x86_32 port working, to
> do that would require dropping linux-x86 too. So maybe the discussion
> should be broadened to ask if the time is approaching to remove the x86_32
> port? At one point, one of the arguments to keep linux-x86 working was
> reconditioning older computers but I don't know if this is still the case.
> I see a mail to jdk-dev from Mark Yagnatinsky that talks about JNI libs or
> drivers that are 32-bit only. There isn't much context but it would be
> surprising for something that is actively maintained to not have a 64-bit
> build in 2023. He also mentions limiting resources but that may be a case
> where an OS container should be used. It might be that you expand the
> Motivation in draft JEP to cover these points.
>
> -Alan
>
>
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