Standard Compilation & OSR

When the JVM executes a Java method, it checks the sum of those two counters and decides whether or not the method is eligible for compilation. If it is, the method is queued for compilation (see Compilation Threads for more details about queuing). This kind of compilation has no official name but is often called standard compilation.

But what if the method has a really long loop—or one that never exits and provides all the logic of the program? In that case, the JVM needs to compile the loop without waiting for a method invocation. So every time the loop completes an execution, the branching counter is incremented and inspected. If the branching counter has exceeded its individual threshold, then the loop (and not the entire method) becomes eligible for compilation.

This kind of compilation is called On-Stack Replacement (OSR), because even if the loop is compiled, that isn’t sufficient: the JVM has to have the ability to start executing the compiled version of the loop while the loop is still running. When the code for the loop has finished compiling, the JVM replaces the code (on-stack), and the next iteration of the loop will execute the much-faster compiled version of the code.

If a method is compiled using standard compilation, then the next method invocation will execute the compiled method; if a loop is compiled using OSR, then the next iteration of the loop will execute the compiled code.