That was brought over to the JDK six months ago. The JDK can now spawn millions of Erlang-like processes ("virtual threads") per second.
Erlang is a great inspiration and it does incredibly well with the development resources available to it, but it's hard to compete with the level of engineering investment in the JDK and its state-of-the-art GCs, optimising JIT compilers, and low-overhead in-production tracing and profiling.
In my opinion, trying to replicate ERTS on top of another virtual machine either requires making that virtual machine more like the BEAM, or will end up always playing catch up with the BEAM itself in some aspect. That's just my two cents though.
Also when two BEAM VM speak to each other its as if they are just one machine. no serialization de serialization of data, no protobufs, etc. It's all just primitives being sent between processes regardless of their location.
The JVM supports languages with mutation or without. That x86 supports mutation doesn't hinder, say, Haskell from being efficiently compiled to it.
> Also when two BEAM VM speak to each other its as if they are just one machine. no serialization de serialization of data, no protobufs, etc. It's all just primitives being sent between processes regardless of their location.
There is no need for that protocol to be built into the VM . The JVM is a lower-level VM than BEAM (parts of the runtime, like the thread scheduler and even one of the JITs are written in Java).
I have the utmost respect for Erlang's design, and have borrowed inspiration from it. It is truly a towering achievement. But BEAM simply doesn't have anywhere near the level of investment required to be a leading platform. I wish there was more demand for it, but there isn't.
The JVM is designed as a general-purpose VM, aiming to accommodate a wide variety of languages with different semantics. This broad scope can sometimes lead to compromises when it comes to optimizing for specific language features or use cases. On the other hand, the Erlang VM is tailored to the semantics of Erlang and fault-tolerant systems, which allows it to be highly optimized for these specific requirements. This focused approach enables the BEAM to excel in areas such as concurrency, fault tolerance, and process isolation. As mentioned earlier, the BEAM offers strong fault tolerance and process isolation. When a specific library or process encounters an issue and panics, it doesn't bring the entire VM down. Instead, only the affected process is terminated, allowing the rest of the system to continue functioning as expected. This level of isolation is achieved through BEAM's lightweight processes, which have their own heap and stack, and communicate with each other only through message passing. Some features that the Erlang VM has, which are specifically tailored to fault-tolerant systems and not found in the JVM, include: a) Per-process garbage collection: BEAM uses a per-process garbage collection approach, which enables it to efficiently handle millions of lightweight processes without the need for stop-the-world GC pauses.
b) Preemptive scheduling: BEAM's preemptive scheduler ensures that no single process can monopolize the CPU, and that all processes receive a fair share of processing time. This is a crucial feature for building highly concurrent and fault-tolerant systems. (The BEAM is ostensible an OS and can even be run bare metal!)
c) Supervision trees: The Erlang/OTP platform provides a built-in supervision tree mechanism, which allows developers to define strategies for monitoring and restarting failed processes automatically. This contributes to the overall stability and reliability of the system.
The JVM has made significant advancements in performance and garbage collection, the BEAM has been specifically optimized for the unique requirements of Erlang and fault-tolerant systems. Its focused approach allows it to offer features and optimizations that are particularly suited for these use cases.
In response to:
> But BEAM simply doesn't have anywhere near the level of investment required to be a leading platform. I wish there was more demand for it, but there isn't.
While it's true that BEAM may not have received the same level of investment as the JVM, it's important to note that the level of investment doesn't necessarily determine a platform's effectiveness or suitability for specific use cases. The Erlang VM has been designed and optimized over 35 years for the unique requirements of Erlang and fault-tolerant systems, which has resulted in a set of features and optimizations that cater specifically to these needs, its unparalleled in this field, and As such, the BEAM's focused approach allows it to be a strong contender in its niche, particularly for building highly concurrent, fault-tolerant, and distributed systems. It's not necessarily about competing with the JVM across the board; instead, it's about excelling in specific areas where the Erlang VM's unique features and optimizations provide tangible benefits.
Moreover, the Erlang/OTP ecosystem has a dedicated and passionate community that continues to drive its development and innovation. This community's efforts have ensured that BEAM remains a powerful and relevant platform for building resilient systems, despite having comparatively less investment than other platforms like the JVM.
