A molecular dynamics computer simulation performance comparison of Java versus C

Authors
Citation
Mjd. Mallett, A molecular dynamics computer simulation performance comparison of Java versus C, MOL SIMULAT, 26(6), 2001, pp. 417-422
Citations number
7
Categorie Soggetti
Physical Chemistry/Chemical Physics
Journal title
MOLECULAR SIMULATION
ISSN journal
08927022 → ACNP
Volume
26
Issue
6
Year of publication
2001
Pages
417 - 422
Database
ISI
SICI code
0892-7022(2001)26:6<417:AMDCSP>2.0.ZU;2-S
Abstract
The relative performance of molecular dynamics (MD) Computer simulations of fluids written in ANSI C is compared to that achieved by a comparable prog ram written in Java. The performance of the Java program is shown to be dep endent upon its runtime environment. The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) fro m the Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.2 provides a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler option on Solaris and Windows 95 platforms which decreases the execution t ime by approximately 4 - 10x compared to the standard Java interpreter. The compiled Java implementation of the MD computer simulation runs between 30 100% slower, depending on the platform. compared to the equivalent C imple mentation. The stability of the two simulations, as measured by conservatio n of energy is shown to be identical to within similar to1% over 10(5) time steps.