You essentially get something like this with Terracotta http://www.terracotta.org/ http://www.terracotta.org/ You can even stop a Terracotta backed JVM and sta

You essentially get something like this with Terracotta http://www.terracotta.org/ http://www.terracotta.org/ You can even stop a Terracotta backed JVM and start it back up to continue where you left off without any manual caching code or special weak reference APIs (which is the heart of the question I gather, no intervention).