In this episode, Simon Ritter, Deputy CTO at Azul, sat down with podcast host Michael Redlich, Lead Editor of the Java topic at InfoQ, and discussed the latest features in OpenJDK and Simon’s experiences serving on the JCP Expert Group since JDK 9. OpenJDK topics included: the six-month release cycle, Generational Shenandoah, JDK Flight Recorder, Project Leyden and Compact Object Headers.

Please note that this podcast was recorded on October 29, 2025 before anticipated upcoming events were discussed and before the public announcement on the acquisition of Payara by Azul.

Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/4aqpTEe

Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns and technologies:
https://www.infoq.com/software-architects-newsletter 

Upcoming Events:

QCon London 2026 (March 16-19, 2026)
QCon London equips senior engineers, architects, and technical leaders with trusted, practical insights to lead the change in software development. Get real-world solutions and leadership strategies from senior software practitioners defining current trends and solving today's toughest software challenges.
https://qconlondon.com/

QCon AI Boston 2026 (June 1-2, 2026)
Learn how real teams are accelerating the entire software lifecycle with AI.
https://boston.qcon.ai


The InfoQ Podcasts: 
Weekly inspiration to drive innovation and build great teams from senior software leaders. Listen to all our podcasts and read interview transcripts:

- The InfoQ Podcast https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/ 
- Engineering Culture Podcast by InfoQ https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/#engineering_culture 
- Generally AI: https://www.infoq.com/generally-ai-podcast/ 

Follow InfoQ:
- Mastodon: https://techhub.social/@infoq 
- X: https://x.com/InfoQ?from=@ 
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/infoq/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InfoQdotcom#
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/infoqdotcom/?hl=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/infoq
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/infoq.com


Write for InfoQ: Learn and share the changes and innovations in professional software development.
- Join a community of experts.
- Increase your visibility.
- Grow your career.
https://www.infoq.com/write-for-infoq

Transcript

The Latest in OpenJDK and JCP Expert Group: Insights with Simon Ritter

Jonas Bonér, CTO of LightBend and creator Akka, discusses using Akka when developing distributed systems. He talks about the Actor Model, and how every Microservice needs to be viewed as a system to be successful. 

Why listen to this podcast:

 - Akka is JVM-based framework design for developing distributed systems leveraging the Actor Model - an approach for writing concurrent systems that treat actors as universal primitives and the most successful model with abstraction has been streaming
 - Circuit breakers in Akka are a backup and retry policy; they protect you by capturing failure data and allow you to roll back 
 - Every Microservice needs to be viewed as a system, it needs to have multiple parts that run on different machines in order to function and be fully resilient - thus is a Microsystem
 - Two different trends have emerged when it comes to hardware and environments: one is the trend toward Multi-core, the is a movement toward virtualized environments and the cloud
 - Saga pattern of managing long running transactions in a distributed system fits very well with messaging style architectures

Notes and links can be found on: http://bit.ly/2kwB2eB

Akka
The Actor Model
When Akka and the Actor Model is the perfect choice
Circuit breakers patterns in distributed systems
Two trends toward Multi-core
Reactive Manifesto
Event Driven vs. Message Driven
Reactive Programming and Streams
Microliths to Microsystems
What do you have to get right before you start trying to deploy a distributed systems?
Working with ML / AI at Lightbend to understand tracing through distributed system
Saga Pattern

More on this:
Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ http://bit.ly/2kwB2eB

You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hottest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq

InfoQ Podcast

Show Notes

Jonas Bonér on the Actor Model, Akka, Reactive Programming, Microservices and Distributed Systems

Software engineers, architects and team leads have found inspiration to drive change and innovation in their team by listening to the weekly InfoQ Podcast. They have received essential information that helped them validate their software development map. We have achieved that by interviewing some of the top CTOs, engineers and technology directors from companies like Uber, Netflix and more. Over 1,200,000 downloads in the last 3 years.

The Latest in OpenJDK and JCP Expert Group: Insights with Simon Ritter

InfoQ

Related tracks