Passing pointers between C and Java through JNI

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At the moment, i'm trying to create a Java-application which uses CUDA-functionality. The connection between CUDA and Java works fine, but i've got another problem and wanted to ask, if my thoughts about it are correct.

When i call a native function from Java, i pass some data to it, the functions calculates something and returns a result. Is it possible, to let the first function return a reference (pointer) to this result which i can pass to JNI and call another function that does further calculations with the result?

My idea was to reduce the overhead that comes from copying data to and from the GPU by leaving the data in the GPU memory and just passing a reference to it so other functions can use it.

After trying some time, i thought for myself, this shouldn't be possible, because pointers get deleted after the application ends (in this case, when the C-function terminates). Is this correct? Or am i just to bad in C to see the solution?

Edit: Well, to expand the question a little bit (or make it more clearly): Is memory allocated by JNI native functions deallocated when the function ends? Or may i still access it until either the JNI application ends or when i free it manually?

Thanks for your input :)

cuda pointers java-native-interface java
7 Answers

In C++ you can use any mechanism you want to allocate/free memory: the stack, malloc/free, new/delete or any other custom implementation. The only requirement is that if you allocated a block of memory with one mechanism, you have to free it with the same mechanism, so you can't call free on a stack variable and you can't call delete on malloced memory.

JNI has its own mechanisms for allocating/freeing JVM memory:

  • NewObject/DeleteLocalRef
  • NewGlobalRef/DeleteGlobalRef
  • NewWeakGlobalRef/DeleteWeakGlobalRef

These follow the same rule, the only catch is that local refs can be deleted "en masse" either explicitly, with PopLocalFrame, or implicitly, when the native method exits.

JNI doesn't know how you allocated your memory, so it can't free it when your function exits. Stack variables will obviously be destroyed because you're still writing C++, but your GPU memory will remain valid.

The only problem then is how to access the memory on subsequent invocations, and then you can use Gunslinger47's suggestion:

JNIEXPORT jlong JNICALL Java_MyJavaClass_Function1() {
    MyClass* pObject = new MyClass(...);
    return (long)pObject;
}

JNIEXPORT void JNICALL Java_MyJavaClass_Function2(jlong lp) {
    MyClass* pObject = (MyClass*)lp;
    ...
}
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