The Java Virtual Machine Specification, Java SE 7 Edition (Java Series)

Written by the inventors of the technology, The Java® Virtual Machine Specification, Java SE 7 Edition,is the definitive technical reference for the Java Virtual Machine.

The book provides complete, accurate, and detailed coverage of the Java Virtual Machine. It fully describes the invokedynamic instruction and method handle mechanism added in Java SE 7, and gives the formal Prolog specification of the type-checking verifier introduced in Java SE 6. The book also includes the class file extensions for generics and annotations defined in Java SE 5.0, and aligns the instruction set and initialization rules with the Java Memory Model.

Tim Lindholm is a former Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. He was a contributor to the Java programming language and the senior architect of the Java Virtual Machine, later working on Java for mobile devices. Prior to Sun, he worked on virtual machines and runtime systems for Prolog at Argonne National Laboratory and Quintus. He holds a B.A. in Mathematics from Carleton College.

Frank Yellin is a former Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems. He was an original member of the Java project and spent a decade working on runtime systems for interpreted and compiled languages. Prior to Sun, he worked on the compilation of Common Lisp at Lucid. He holds an A.B. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard and an M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford.

Gilad Bracha is the creator of the Newspeak programming language and a former Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. Prior to Sun, he worked on Strongtalk, the Animorphic Smalltalk System. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah.

Alex Buckley is the Specification Lead for the Java programming language and the Java Virtual Machine at Oracle. He holds a Ph.D. in Computing from Imperial College London.