Computing efficiency

[Peter the Swede]

Best groupmember,

I just got to an intersection within my project where I have to decide what
language to use for the part of my project that handles computing.

What is the efficiency difference between different language, anyone having
experience!? I'm most interested in the difference between Java, C, Fortran
and Matlab (ok, matlab is not a language, more of a script). I'd rather use
Java within my whole project, just to be consistent.

Cheers, Peter

 

[Michael Borgwardt]

I just got to an intersection within my project where I have to decide what
language to use for the part of my project that handles computing.

What is the efficiency difference between different language, anyone having
experience!?

Depends on what you do, how you do it, and the particular runtime environment
much more than on the language.

The German c't magazine recently did some benchmarks (using Java, C++, C# and
Delphi) and the result was that no language was consistently the fastest and
that the differences were relatively small (less than a factor of 2) in most
cases.

 

[Peter the Swede]

So if my application is not that sensitive towards computations it doesn't
really mater.!? Do you have a link to that German magazine? Is it in
english?

In the application there will be matrix inverting and stuff like that. I
assume there are packages availible in that area!?

Cheers, Peter

 

[Michael Borgwardt]

So if my application is not that sensitive towards computations it doesn't
really mater.!?

Yes. This is in fact nearly a commonplace and true for all applications.

Do you have a link to that German magazine? Is it in
english?

http://www.heise.de/ct/inhverz/search.shtml?T=java+delphi+benchmark&Suchen=suchen
Unfortunately, the article is not available online even in German.

In the application there will be matrix inverting and stuff like that. I
assume there are packages availible in that area!?

http://www.mi.uib.no/~bjornoh/jmp/
http://math.nist.gov/javanumerics/jama/

 

[Peter the Swede]

Thanks for the links, you are a rock!

Cheers, Peter

 

[Roedy Green]

What is the efficiency difference between different language, anyone having
experience!? I'm most interested in the difference between Java, C, Fortran
and Matlab (ok, matlab is not a language, more of a script). I'd rather use
Java within my whole project, just to be consistent.

On big problems, the efficiency of the algorithm overwhelms the
efficiency of picky details in language implementation. It becomes a
matter of how clever was the mathematician who wrote the class
libraries. You pretty well have to benchmark the crucial methods to
find out. From what I have read, every language has spots where it
shines above the others.

Since the Java class libraries are newer, and presuming all
mathematicians are equal, I would expect Java algorithms to be
designed to work best in very large RAM spaces. Earlier libraries
were constrained to work in much smaller space, something like a
ballerina performing in a telephone booth.

 

[Peter the Swede]

Interesting, will look into that. Thanks Roedy!

Cheers, Peter