The HotSpot offers a so called 'optimized' configuration which is actually the same as a product build, but without setting '-DPRODUCT'. That means that an 'optimized' HotSpot VM offers additional command line options and functionality which is not present in an actual product build.

While the 'product' configuration is exported in the top-level configure/make system as "--with-debug-level=release" the , this is not the case for the 'optimized' configuration.