C Faces Java In Performance Tests

catseye_95051 writes "An independent programmer in the UK (he does not work for any of the Java VM makers) has done a series of direct C vs. Java speed comparisons. The Results are likely to surprise some of the Java skeptics out there. " Author Chris Rijk admits, "This article is not supposed to be an attempt to fully quantify the speed difference between Java and C - it's too simple and incomplete for that," but the results are nonetheless food for thought.

Comments

What I think...

[pen]

Speed or no speed, Java is becoming one of those languages... you know what I'm talking about. One of the languages, along with C, C++, etc. Why?

One of the easiest languages to learn (provided that you understand OOP). I tried C++, and I failed (for now). I tried Java, and it is very easy for me. And for the ease of learning, it gives me immense power. Everything anyone could ever want in a true OOP language.

It is also multiplatform... we all know about that.

The only language I can think of that comes close is VB. VB is Windows-only, (well, you have VBA in Office98 on MacOS, OK) and it doesn't give you much of OOP (inheritance, etc.).

Finally, there are a lot of people out there that will learn a language simply because it's in demand, so that they can get a lot of money paid for writing things in it, and Java wins here as well. Just go do a search on Dice.

The only thing that bothers me is that Java is now definitely being controlled by a corporation. I'm pretty glad it's not Microsoft, but I'd still rather have it controlled by an unbiased group. OTOH, without Sun's promotion and development, who knows if Java would ever rise to where it is today.

Let's just hope that the damn applets will fade out... I just hate them! Please correct me anywhere you think I'm wrong - that's what the Reply link is for.

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Re:Too good to be true

[Jackrabbit]

Look, I code Java for a living. I don't want to be a Java-evangelist (Javangelist?), but I've got a few problems with your post.

As far as getting the latest JDK in anything but Windoze, you can currently get Java2 v1.3 in Windoze, Solaris and Linux (with other ports on the way). The fact that they came out with the Windoze port first should be no real surprise to anyone: most folks are still using Windoze, hence there is more demand for upgrades on this OS than any other.

I've written Java stand-alone apps that are monumental in size and I've written Java server-based apps. I think that Java's main glory lies in server-side programming for web-enabled applications, but it is no slouch in the large stand-alone application market. You keep hearing people complain that Java eats up so much memory when all you want is a simple Notepad app. You need to understand what Java is doing and learn to work with/around it.

If you load a large app that utilizes many of the Swing widgets and interfaces, the memory load becomes a bit more understandable. On the large apps that I've written for Java, it has actually performed quite well (sub-second sorting and display on a 10K row table, etc).

Most of the comments that I see bashing Java are from people that have only taken a cursory pass at the language. If you try to code a Swing interface using the same paradigms as AWT (or C, C++, etc), you'll wind up with a slow monstrosity. If you code Swing the way it was intended to be coded (using the MVC architecture), you'll find that it's a remarkably powerful and full-featured GUI API.

At any rate...I'll get off my soapbox now. I really don't mean to tout Java as the be-all end-all of programming languages (it's not). But it is one of the better languages out there for the current direction of Internet-enabled programming.

It's all about optimization

[jmv]

I can't comment about the other tests, but I've looked at the FFT code and can say it is very badly optimized. There are some things a C compiler can't optimized because of aliasing, but a Java compiler can. There are ways to code these kinds of things so it can work, for example doing explicit loop unrolling. In the FFT code he had, the FPU pipeline would always be stalled, because lots of loops only have 4 multiplications and 2 additions.

What makes me even more suspicious is that I have a K7-500 too and I have done some tests with a heavily optimized FFT (fftw) and I get a performance around 400 mflops. There's just no way a JVM can be 220% faster than that. So my comclusion is "with poor code and poor optimization, Java can be faster than C".

I don't want to take position of the whole Java vs C speed, but what I'm saying is that at least his FFT test is flawed.