Here is what Google did internally:

- Bundle all C/C++ native libraries, and link them all together with the java launcher - e.g you produce your own java.exe that has your C/C++ libraries linked in, then you slap the .jar file - for extra bonus you can slap at the back of your .exe and make it load from there

  Voila - you have single executable (almost) with all you need, and you don't need to unpack .dll's anywhere

  But... you must compile java.exe yourself...

Java is somewhat like chrome in that it pre-emptively gets some RAM, because it's managing memory allocation to programs itself. (and because the speed increase of not doing system-calls offsets some of the performance hits from running a JIT)

Is that 512 the lowest you can get it with command line options?

Mostly FUD. You can easily tweak your min and max heap sizes. You can have an app that takes less that 512 megs of RAM.