Prospects for Scientific Computing in Polymorphic, Object-Oriented Style

Since the introduction of the Java programming language, there has been widespread interest in the use of Java for high performance scientific computing. One major impediment to such use is the performance penalty paid relative to Fortran. Although Java implementations have made great strides, they still fall short on programs that use the full power of Java’s object-oriented features. In this paper, we present an analysis of the cost associated with polymorphic, object-oriented scientific programming in Java, and discuss the compiler strategies that would reduce the overhead of such programming style. Our ultimate goal is to foster the development of compiler technology that will reward, rather than penalize good object-oriented programming practice.