Java 5.0 (Tiger) and Java 6.0 (Mustang) performance compared

The final version of Java 6.0 isn’t available yet, but the first comparative benchmarks have already appeared. The tests used the Javolution benchmark. Javolution provides real-time support.

Javolution is specialized, and the results need to be read in that light. They do show a big performance improvement, but the gains apply to the specific Javolution implementations. The tests compare Javolution classes with standard J2SE classes, for example javolution.util.FastTable against java.util.ArrayList.

• http://javolution.org/doc/results15.txt (Tiger)
• http://javolution.org/doc/results16.txt (Mustang)

You can’t use these results to put an exact figure on the performance gains over Java 5.0. Still, it looks like Sun is keeping up its habit of making the entire runtime considerably faster with each release. I’d love to see a comparison of Swing and AWT performance. Graphics were one of the sore spots Mustang was supposed to address.

Has anyone tried their desktop applications on Mustang and care to share their impressions?

Related

• TheServerSide discussion Mustang (1.6) versus Tiger (1.5) Performance Comparison