BigByteBuffer/MappedBigByteBuffer

[Alan Bateman]

Jürgen Baier wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I just downloaded the latest JDK7 and I could not find the big buffer
> classes (BigByteBuffer, ...). Are the big buffers still on the roadmap? When
> can we expect a first version?
>
> I think these buffers are very important for dealing with very large
> memories (especially for data-intensive applications).
>
> Regards,
>
> Juergen
>   
The original early draft did propose a set of 64-bit addressable buffers 
but we aren't taking that proposal any further. The real demand is for 
64-bit arrays or collections. For I/O, the use-case is contiguous 
mapping of file regions larger than 2GB. At one point Doug Lea, and the 
collections group looked into creating a package of big arrays for each 
of the scaler types. With such a solution we could do something to allow 
the array be backed by a file mapping. More recently, there was a  
proposal for large arrays [1]. This one is on the list for "further 
consideration" [2] by the COIN project.

Can you say any more about your needs?

-Alan.

[1] http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/coin-dev/2009-March/000869.html
[2] http://blogs.sun.com/darcy/entry/project_coin_consideration_round_2