Going Native

Java is great for solving many kinds of problems, but it isn’t the first programming language that comes to mind when application performance is a critical issue. Sure, you can try to work around this with more powerful hardware, but at some point, a program written in Java just isn’t going to run any faster.

One way to speed things up is to recode parts of your application into C, C++, or even assembly language and then call these functions via JNI, the Java Native Interface (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/guide/jni). However, this would take costly development time and would jeopardize the portability that is Java’s hallmark.

In a way, the design of Java itself works against you. The Java compiler javac does not generate truly native instructions like gcc and g++ do for C and C++. Instead, the Java compiler generates bytecodes, which must then be converted into native…

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