I have lost count of the number of times I have been told that Java is not a suitable language in which to develop applications where performance is a major consideration. My first response is usually to ask for clarification on what is actually meant by “performance” as two of the most common measures – throughput and latency, sometimes conflict with each other, and approaches to optimise for one may have a detrimental effect on the other.
Techniques exist for developing Java applications that match, or even exceed, the performance requirements of applications that have been built using languages more traditionally used for this purpose. However, even this may not be enough to get the best performance from a latency perspective. Java applications still have to rely on the Operating System to provide access to the underlying hardware. Typically latency-sensitive (often called “Real Time”) applications operate best when there is almost direct access to the underlying hardware, and the same applies to Java. In this article, we will introduce some approaches that can be taken when we want to have our applications utilise system resources most effectively.
