AES-NI intrinsics enabled by default?

Question

The flag has a default of true and it will be set to false if the detection fails, so you can simply use +PrintFlagsFinal to see if it is used:

My Laptop without AES-NI:

C:\>"C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_51\bin\java" -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal -version | find "UseAES"
     bool UseAES                                    = false           {product}
     bool UseAESIntrinsics                          = false           {product}
java version "1.7.0_51"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_51-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.51-b03, mixed mode)

Same on Desktop with AES-NI:

C:\>"C:\Program Files\Java\jdk7\bin\java" -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal -version | find "AES"
     bool UseAES                                    = true            {product}
     bool UseAESIntrinsics                          = true            {product}

java version "1.7.0_51"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_51-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.51-b03, mixed mode)

C:\>"C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin\java" -XX:+PrintFlagsFinal -version | find "AES"
     bool UseAES                                    = true            {product}
     bool UseAESIntrinsics                          = true            {product}

java version "1.7.0_51"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_51-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 24.51-b03, mixed mode, sharing)

So, it works for both x64 and i686 (WOW64) with recent Java 7. The feature was introduced with https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-7184394 and backported to 7u40 and 7u45.

Important: AES-NI may only be available on the server VM.

This was acknowledged by Oracle after a bug report was filed. This vital piece of information was missing when they created the featues list of Java 8 where it was introduced (it later got backported to 7 as well). The server VM can be explicitly choosen by providing the -server option on the java or javaw command line.

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