Author: Mark Christiaens
Date: 05:37:28 05/10/02
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I've been working with Java extensively for my PhD (and also C, C++, ...) My experience is that currently Java is a factor 2 slower than similar C code (with maximum optimization) for tight loops. If you go to heavily object oriented languages, the difference may not be as large. The main reason for this is that C/C++ compilers compile one source-code module at a time and cannot optimize over these boundaries. JIT-compilers for Java see the whole application and can for example inline methods from other classes which were not available at compile time. Some of them even inline speculatively and when new classes are loaded undo incorrect optimizations. The Jikes-RVM JIT compiler is said to often inline to 10-levels deep! Actually making a fair comparison between the two is very hard because there are no (as far as I know) large, identical applications written in both languages. All in all, I would catalogue Java as being slower but not that much. You always have the option to write large portions of your applications in Java and write a few time-critical routines in native code (using the Java Native Interface (JNI)). You also get the added advantage of a huge amount of well standardized libraries that will run on a lot of platforms. Another point that might be interesting is that we're moving towards JIT/interpreter language whether we want to or not: even Microsoft with it CLR (common runtime layer I think) is moving C, C++, C#, VB to an interpreted environment. Anyway, great material for a flame war ;)
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