BEA shoots out JRockit for Itanium 2

BEA Systems Tuesday will announce the availability of JRockit 8.0, a Java Virtual Machine suited for Intel's Itanium 2 microprocessor. The JRockit virtual machine allows applications written in Java to run on Intel's 64-bit processor without extensive modification, according to BEA executives. To take advantage of the processing muscle in Intel's line of Itanium chips, companies need to rewrite or update existing 32-bit applications for the Itanium.

JRockit 8.0 is available for download from BEA or Intel this week. A version of JRockit for Red Hat Advanced Server will also be available this week and ready for Windows Server 2003 soon after its release in April. BEA will also include the JRockit Java Virtual Machine in WebLogic 8.1, which is due in April.