Comparing the performance of JAVA with Fortran and C for numerical computing ¹

Y. F. Hu${}^1$, R. J. Allan${}^1$ and K. C. F. Maguire${}^2$
${}^1$Daresbury Laboratory, CLRC, Daresbury,
Warrington WA4 4AD, United Kingdom
${}^2$European Southern Observatory
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
D-85748 Garching bei Muenchen
Germany

Abstract:

The performance of Java has been compared with that of Fortran 90 and C on two benchmarks of particular interest to scientific and engineering applications. It was found that in comparison with F90 and C, the I/O and compute performance of Java varies from 30% slower to about 3 times slower, depending on the platforms and the compilers (and the Java Virtual Machines). The best relative performance is achieved on a Pentium II, where it was found that the IBM Java yields code that is about 30-40% slower in computing and I/O performance.

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