Performance evaluation of virtual execution environments for intensive computing on usual representations of multidimensional arrays

• Published in: Science of computer programming 2016-12, Vol.132, p.29-49
• Main Authors: de Carvalho Junior, Francisco Heron, Rezende, Cenez Araújo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Common Language Infrastructure (CLI); High performance computing; Java virtual machine (JVM); Performance evaluation; Virtual execution
• ISSN: 0167-6423; 1872-7964
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scico.2016.04.005

This paper evaluates the sequential performance of virtual execution environments (VEE) belonging to the CLI (Common Language Infrastructure) and JVM (Java Virtual Machine) standards, for the usual approaches of representing multidimensional arrays in programs that present intensive array access. Such programs are mostly found in scientific and engineering application domains. It shows that the performance profile of virtual execution is still highly influenced by the choice of both the multidimensional array representation and the VEE implementation, also contradicting some results of previous related works, as well as some beliefs of HPC programmers that come from their practice with native execution languages, such as C, C++, and Fortran. Finally, recommendations are provided both for HPC programmers that desire to take advantage of VEE performance for their array-intensive code and for VEE developers that are interested in improving the performance of virtual execution for the needs of HPC applications. •We evaluate performance of virtual execution for array-intensive programs.•Performance of multidimensional array representations varies across virtual machines.•We recommend either jagged arrays with Oracle HotSpot or embedded arrays with IBM J9.•Rectangular arrays are still outperformed by jagged arrays in CLI.•These experiments have shown that Java VMs present better performance than CLI ones.