NINJA: Java for high performance numerical computing

When Java was first introduced, there was a perception that its many benefits came at a significant performance cost. In the particularly performance-sensitive field of numerical computing, initial measurements indicated a hundred-fold performance disadvantage between Java and more established languages such as Fortran and C. Although much progress has been made, and Java now can be competitive with C/C++ in many important situations, significant performance challenges remain. Existing Java virtual machines are not yet capable of performing the advanced loop transformations and automatic parallelization that are now common in state-of-the-art Fortran compilers. Java also has difficulties in implementing complex arithmetic efficiently. These performance deficiencies can be attacked with a combination of class libraries (packages, in Java) that implement truly multidimensional arrays and complex numbers, and new compiler techniques that exploit the properties of these class libraries to...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2002
• Where: SP
• Authors: José E. Moreira, Samuel P. Midkiff, Manish Gupta, Peng Wu, George S. Almasi, Pedro V. Artigas
• Keywords: Java, Security Privacy, Significant Performance, Significant Performance Cost, SP 2002