Passing pointers between C and Java through JNI

Question

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 :)

Answer 1

I used the following approach:

in your JNI code, create a struct that would hold references to objects you need. When you first create this struct, return its pointer to java as a long. Then, from java you just call any method with this long as a parameter, and in C cast it to a pointer to your struct.

The structure will be in the heap, so it will not be cleared between different JNI calls.

EDIT: I don't think you can use long ptr = (long)&address; since address is a static variable. Use it the way Gunslinger47 suggested, i.e. create new instance of class or a struct (using new or malloc) and pass its pointer.