Performance of an OS is critical. That's why many have suggested that an OS cannot be written in Java. JNode will not be the fastest OS around for quite some time, but it is and will be a proof that it can be done in Java.
Since release 0.1.6, the interpreter has been removed from JNode, so now all methods are compiled before being executed. Currently two new native code compilers are under development that will add various levels of optimizations to the current compiler. We expect these compilers to bring us much closer to the performance of Sun's J2SDK.
This page will keep track of performance of JNode, measured using various benchmarks, over time.
The performance tests are done on a Pentium4 2Ghz with 1GB of memory.
| ArithOpt, org.jnode.test.ArithOpt | Lower numbers are better. | ||
| Date | JNode Interpreted | JNode Compiled | Sun J2SDK |
| 12-jul-2003 | 1660ms | 108ms | 30ms |
| 19-jul-2003 | 1639ms | 105ms | 30ms |
| 17-dec-2003 | 771ms | 63ms | 30ms |
| 20-feb-2004 | n.a. | 59ms | 30ms |
| 03-sep-2004 | n.a. | 27ms* | 30ms |
| 28-jul-2005 | n.a. | 20ms* | 30ms** |
| Sieve, org.jnode.test.Sieve | Higher numbers are better. | ||
| Date | JNode Interpreted | JNode Compiled | Sun J2SDK |
| 12-jul-2003 | 53 | 455 | 5800 |
| 19-jul-2003 | 55 | 745 | 5800 |
| 17-dec-2003 | 158 | 1993 | 5800 |
| 20-feb-2004 | n.a. | 2002 | 5800 |
| 03-sep-2004 | n.a. | 4320* | 5800 |
| 28-jul-2005 | n.a. | 3660* | 4252** |
*) Using L1A compiler
**) Using J2SDK 1.5.0 (others 1.4.2)