An evaluation of Java implementations of message-passing

As an objected-oriented programming language and a platform-independent environment, Java has been attracting much attention. However, the trade-off between portability and performance has not spared Java. The initial performance of Java programs has been poor, due to the interpretive nature of the environment. In this paper we present the communication performance results of three different types of message-passing programs: native, Java and native communications, and pure Java. Despite concerns about performance and numerical issues, we believe the obtained results confirm that high-performance parallel computing in Java is possible, as the technology matures and the approach is pragmatic. Copyright  2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.