Basic HTML version of Foils prepared October 16 98

Foil 36 Java Rules for Floating Point

From Integration of Scientific and Technical Computing with Enterprise Information Systems RCI North American Annual Member Executive Conference October 13-15 98 -- October 15 98. by Geoffrey C. Fox


Java is particularly slow on floating point -- why?
  • Immature Compiler and library Technology
  • Does not Exploit optimally hardware on PowerPC and Intel platforms
    • Current Java rules optimized for SPARC architecture .....
  • Does not use well known compiler optimizations for blocking, unrolling, reorganizing expressions
Current Java rules imply that if careful (avoid indeterminate threads and use of JNI) Java not only runs everywhere but gets identical results everywhere
Need to study Reproducibility -- Performance Trade-offs
  • Maybe people have emphasized performance too much but you are not going to change their minds quickly -- should be tolerant of all perceived needs
  • Note current Java is both lower precision AND lower performance than other languages



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