Java Performance

Java Performance

Programs written in Java have a reputation for being slower and requiring more memory than those written in C. However, Java programs’ execution speed improved significantly with the introduction of Just-in-time compilation in 1997/1998 for Java 1.1,^[28] the addition of language features supporting better code analysis (such as inner classes, StringBuffer class, optional assertions, etc.), and optimizations in the Java Virtual Machine itself, such as HotSpot becoming the default for Sun’s JVM in 2000. Currently (November 2011), Java 2.0 code has approximately half the performance of C code.

Some platforms offer direct hardware support for Java; there are microcontrollers that can run Java in hardware instead of a software JVM, and ARM based processors can have hardware support for executing Java bytecode through its Jazelle option.