If I had to bet on that, I'd say it is a move to make it a really great platform for serverless; where it can absorb trafic spikes with ease, and go to sleep ve

If I had to bet on that, I'd say it is a move to make it a really great platform for serverless; where it can absorb trafic spikes with ease, and go to sleep very fast. The logic required in a typical web server is not complicated. Most of what the hardware does is filling and emptying memory/caches, waiting for the disk or the network, etc. Most useful computations are like very thin spikes that need a vast context to exist. All the current work being done is to carve a lot of this context down. Doing this will drive the operating cost down a lot. The JVM has several other initiatives in the spirit of this. Consider these 2 JEPs that just got added: * Dynamic Max Memory Limit [1] * Timely Reducing Unused Committed Memory [2] There is also the Loom initiative [3], to provide a base for blocking-code-like to run on very cheap threads; providing tiny threads with a tiny context. IMHO these make it possible to have an AWS lambda service that has a typical wake up time in the 10us, rather than a few 100ms. Your functions (and CPU costs) could sleep in-between IO/disk/network requests! [1] http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/8204088 http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/8204088 [2] http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/8204089 http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/8204089 [3] http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~rpressler/loom/Loom-Proposal.html http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~rpressler/loom/Loom-Proposal.htm...