Welcome to Valhalla!

[Brian Goetz]

Welcome to Project Valhalla, our incubation grounds for advanced 
language-VM co-development projects such as Value Types 
(http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~jrose/values/values-0.html) and Generic 
Specialization (https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8046267).  The 
code repositories should open shortly.

To start with, I've published a more details writeup of the design ideas 
for Generic Specialization here:

    http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~briangoetz/valhalla/specialization.html

This remains quite rough, but should give an idea of the scope of what 
we're considering.  We'll be starting to prototype these concepts soon.

As the prototypes emerge, please bear in mind that the first several 
rounds will likely not look anything like the final result.  So, don't 
assume that just because the prototype operates by name mangling, or 
classfile mangling, or requires the operator to do the Chicken Dance, 
that this is the ultimate plan -- its just an expedient way to get to 
the point where we can experiment with something tangible.

And, for those of you with a million questions, please bear in mind that 
we do not necessarily have a million answers.  (I, for one, won't have 
any answers for a while, since I'm going on vacation.)

I'll just answer one question that's probably on everyone's mind: no, 
none of this is stuff we're targeting for Java 9.  This is the 
early-stage explorations of stuff that hopefully will make it into a 
later release.