[Nomen-dev] Java Performance

[Brian H. <bh...@sp...>]

Interesting web site:
http://www.javalobby.org/members/jpr/part3.jsp

What I find most interesting is this comment:

> IBM holds the best Java scores. Their performance is 60% as fast as
> Intel C/C++ in Integer code, and 72% as fast in FP code. Compared to
> Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, IBM makes Java faster than C in the average,
> and this is a low-level benchmark that's heavy on numerical and array
> code, so this is no mean feat.

The Intel compilers are what Intel uses to compile benchmarks with.  I
played with the Intel compilers ~5 years ago.  If your code isn't part of
some benchmark, they tend to be flaky.  I wouldn't trust compiling an
entire application with them- selected inner loops, maybe (where I could
check the assembly language output for correctness *thoroughly*), but not
entire applications.

99% of all applications still use either Microsoft Visual C++ or Gnu C++ 
(depending).  Which means that Java is now a performance competitor to 
either.

The other interesting thing is that this was comparing Java to C, not C++.  
Which means Java has language advantages all over the place- object
oriented, garbage collection, near-WORA, dynamic run-time linking,
exceptions, wide characters, bounds checking on arrays, etc.  It's easier
to develop applications in Java than in C- and in my experience, making
the developer's life easier means faster code, because the developer can 
spend more time thinking about the large scale than the small.

Brian