Sun C++ Vs Sun JAVA - Future - Which is faster

Question

Hi,
Sometimes I am perplexed with Sun's approach. They ship SunC++12 and market for JAVA. I work on both C++ and JAVA. I started career as a JAVA developer and then shifted as a C++ developer for SUN platform. Now I work on both.
Many of Sun's article praise about JAVA and says it is faster than C++. Does that list include Sun C++ compiler too?
Can't Sun C++ developers develop an app better and faster than a Sun java App?
If for Sun everything is JAVA why they invest on C++ compilers?
Now C++ is changing and after couple of years you get C++ - 0X.
Will Sun upgrade the compiler to support thesame?
Jayaram

Answer 1

Dear Friend,
This excersise is absolutely pointless. It can prove nothing.
It proved C++ is powerful. You can close your eyes against truth and live in your fantacy world.
By changing int -> double you went into a muddy ground of a floating point calculations.
By moving your "toggle" objects from heap onto stack you stepped away from java semantics possibilities. No wonder C++ can win here.
Here the constructor is called only one time. Stack and heap are irrelevent. By the way margin was of couple of seconds. No C++ guy will think of JAVA semantics when programming in C++. Do you think of pointers when you program in JAVA?
Both are primitive types. Reason for moving I have specified.
Btw, its likely that compiler managed to figure out those virtual calls and inline them altogether.
I used babys of same mother. SUN. SUN CC compiler and SUN JAVA 1.6.
Its hard to say what happened in your case as you did not tell which compiler flags did you use.
Nothing hard or special in my case. It is truth. C++ WON. You can try yourself.
Its funny that you used register/inline stuff because it can hardly make any real difference in this test.
For particular C++ compiler on particular platform and compilation flags it might have an effect, but thats a third order effect of compiler bugs and inefficiencies.
Being a battle started by the benchmark person, I have the freedom to use all weapons in C++. Use whatever you have. May be you can ask SUN to put a bug in their CC compiler to prove your point. Then I will test with MSVC++ compiler.
Please not I didn't change the end output or logic. Pointers where not required So removed. I was in the office work when I did this. I am not a full time evangelist.
Compiler option. If you understand JVM then it uses onthe fly profiling, compiler optimization etc.. So I used compiler Compiler switch is very much reasonable.
Anyway, the bottom point is that different languages are suitable for different purposes.
Creatively tweaking your programming environment you can make any given combination of particular language/compiler/program to win a race.
First point is right. C++ is a general purpose language. For each specific purpose use only those parts. JAVA is a simple language suitable for normal brains.
Whats ever you tweak for JAVA it is an interpreted language. Additional layer of JVM is there. So native languages may be even pascal and Basic will win JAVA in many bench marks.
Using that car analogy - sport car on a muddy track will hardly compete with an unloaded truck. Though it doesnt mean that sport car is slower.
Again your are risking. The track is not muddy. No only increment operation is done. No floating point multiplication or division. Even if it is there you don't have eany voice to complain. It is primitive type. If still you cribb I can't help.
Java reached the point when performance is not a biggest concern. For majority of applications you win a great deal more by choosing proper algorithms than by rewriting your application on some "faster" language.
Again you are mistaken. Our MAX CPUs clock speed is getting saturated. We are going for multicore architectures. All apps are not parallel. So single core performance is important. So if you can loose the fat in your language always it is better.
Algorithems don't assure that they won't use floating point opration. And the choice of an algorithm is not propritary right of JAVA. Any language can use it.
So the point is don't compare performance of JAVA withh C++ and get patents for the same. It won't take much time for a person like me to break the patents and prove you are wrong.
If you see the url I am given, go three levels up. The test case is the one in the benchmark which had the highest margin of JAVA Win. So Your best result is ruined in a couple of hours!!!!.
Ok letme come back to the point. Why is the C++ team of Sun silent?
I feel they are not funded properly for development or they were told to keep their mouth shut.
I would like to hear from the C++ team of Sun if any one reads this belong to that team.
Reagrds,
Jayaram Ganapathy