Java Performance Tuning

Java Performance Tuning

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Note that this page is very large. The tips on this page are categorized in other pages. Use the tips index page to access smaller focused listings of tips.

This page lists many other pages available on the web, together with a condensed list of tuning tips that each page includes. For the most part I've eliminated any tips that are wrong, but one or two may have slipped past me. Remember that the tuning tips listed are not necessarily good coding practice. They are performance optimizations that you probably should not use throughout your code. Instead they apply to speeding up critical sections of code where performance has already been identified as a problem.

The tips here include only those that are available online for free. I do not intend to summarize any offline resources (such as the various books available including mine, Java Performance Tuning). The tips here are of very variable quality and usefulness, some real gems but some dross and quite a bit of repetition. Comments in square brackets, [], have been added by me.

Use this page by using your browser's "find" or "search" option to identify particular tips you are interested in on the page, and follow up by reading the referenced web page if clarification is necessary.

This page is currently 411KB. This page is updated once a month. You can receive email notification of any changes by subscribing to the newsletter

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/02/22/optimization.html

Performance planning for managers (Page last updated February 2001, Added 2001-03-21, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher OnJava). Tips:

Include budget for performance management.

Create internal performance experts.

Set performance requirements in the specifications.

Include a performance focus in the analysis.

Require performance predictions from the design.

Create a performance test environment.

Test a simulation or skeleton system for validation.

Integrate performance logging into the application layer boundaries.

Performance test the system at multiple scales and tune using the resulting information

Deploy the system with performance logging features.

ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/examples/java/javapt/technique-list.html

A long list of most of the tuning techniques covered in my "Java Performance Tuning" book (Page last updated August 2000, Added 2000-10-23, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher O'Reilly). Tips:

[Since the referred to page is already a summary list, I have not extracted it here. Especially since there are nearly 300 techniques listed. Check the page out directly].

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/05/30/optimization.html

Comparing the performance of LinkedLists and ArrayLists (and Vectors) (Page last updated May 2001, Added 2001-06-18, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher OnJava). Tips:

ArrayList is faster than Vector except when there is no lock acquisition required in HotSpot JVMs (when they have about the same performance).

Vector and ArrayList implementations have excellent performance for indexed access and update of elements, since there is no overhead beyond range checking.

Adding elements to, or deleting elements from the end of a Vector or ArrayList also gives excellent performance except when the capacity is exhausted and the internal array has to be expanded.

Inserting and deleting elements to Vectors and ArrayLists always require an array copy (two copies when the internal array must be grown first). The number of elements to be copied is proportional to [size-index], i.e. to the distance between the insertion/deletion index and the last index in the collection. The array copying overhead grows significantly as the size of the collection increases, because the number of elements that need to be copied with each insertion increases.

For insertions to Vectors and ArrayLists, inserting to the front of the collection (index 0) gives the worst performance, inserting at the end of the collection (after the last element) gives the best performance.

LinkedLists have a performance overhead for indexed access and update of elements, since access to any index requires you to traverse multiple nodes.

LinkedList insertions/deletion overhead is dependent on the how far away the insertion/deletion index is from the closer end of the collection.

Synchronized wrappers (obtained from Collections.synchronizedList(List)) add a level of indirection which can have a high performance cost.

Only List and Map have efficient thread-safe implementations: the Vector and Hashtable classes respectively.

List insertion speed is critically dependent on the size of the collection and the position where the element is to be inserted.

For small collections ArrayList and LinkedList are close in performance, though ArrayList is generally the faster of the two. Precise speed comparisons depend on the JVM and the index where the object is being added.

Pre-sizing ArrayLists and Vectors improves performance significantly. LinkedLists cannot be pre-sized.

ArrayLists can generate far fewer objects for the garbage collector to reclaim, compared to LinkedLists.

For medium to large sized Lists, the location where elements are to inserted is critical to the performance of the list. ArrayLists have the edge for random access.

A dedicated List implementation designed to match data, collection types and data manipulation algorithms will always provide the best performance.

ArrayList internal node traversal from the start to the end of the collection is significantly faster than LinkedList traversal. Consequently queries implemented in the class can be faster.

Iterator traversal of all elements is faster for ArrayList compared to Linkedlist.

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/07/09/optimization.html

Using the WeakHashMap class (Page last updated June 2001, Added 2001-07-20, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher OnJava). Tips:

WeakHashMap can be used to reduce memory leaks. Keys that are no longer strongly referenced from the application will automatically make the corresponding value reclaimable.

To use WeakHashMap as a cache, the keys that evaluate as equal must be recreatable.

Using WeakHashMap as a cache gives you less control over when cache elements are removed compared with other cache types.

Clearing elements of a WeakHashMap is a two stage process: first the key is reclaimed, then the corresponding value is released from the WeakHashMap.

String literals and other objects like Class which are held directly by the JVM are not useful as keys to a WeakHashMap, as they are not necessarily reclaimable when the application no longer references them.

The WeakHashMap values are not released until the WeakHashMap is altered in some way. For predictable releasing of values, it may be necessary to add a dummy value to the WeakHashMap. If you do not call any mutator methods after populating the WeakHashMap, the values and internal WeakReference objects will never be dereferenced [no longer true from 1.4, where most methods now allow values to be released].

WeakHashMap wraps an internal HashMap adding an extra level of indirection which can be a significant performance overhead. [no longer true from 1.4].

Every call to get() creates a new WeakReference object. [no longer true from 1.4].

WeakHashMap.size() iterates through the keys, making it an operation that takes time proportional to the size of the WeakHashMap. [no longer true from 1.4].

WeakHashMap.isEmpty() iterates through the collection looking for a non-null key, so a WeakHashMap which is empty requires more time for isEmpty() to return than a similar WeakHashMap which is not empty. [no longer true from 1.4, where isEmpty() is now slower than previous versions].

http://java.oreilly.com/news/jptsummary_1100.html

ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/examples/java/javapt/summary.html

A high level overview of technical performance tuning, covering 5 levels of tuning competence. (Page last updated November 2000, Added 2000-12-20, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher O'Reilly). Tips:

Start tuning by examining the application architecture for potential bottlenecks.

Architecture bottlenecks are often easy to spot: they are the connecting lines on the diagrams; the single threaded components; the components with many connecting lines attached; etc.

Ensure that application performance is measureable for the given performance targets.

Ensure that there is a test environment which represents the running system. This test-bed should support testing the application at different loads, including a low load and a fully scaled load representing maximum expected usage.

After targeting design and architecture, the biggest bang for your buck in terms of improving performance is choosing a better VM, and then choosing a better compiler.

Start code tuning with proof of concept bottleneck removal: this consists of using profilers to identify bottlenecks, then making simplified changes which may only improve the performance at the bottleneck for a specialized set of activities, and proceeding to the next bottleneck. After tuning competence is gained, move to full tuning.

Each multi-user performance test can typically take a full day to run and analyse. Even simple multi-user performance tuning can take several weeks.

After the easily idenitified bottlenecks have been removed, the remaining performance improvements often come mainly from targeting loops, structures and algorithms.

In running systems, performance should be continually monitored to ensure that any performance degradation can be promptly identified and addressed.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/javapt/chapter/ch04.html

Chapter 4 of "Java Performance Tuning", "Object Creation". (Page last updated September 2000, Added 2000-10-23, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher O'Reilly). Tips:

Establish whether you have a memory problem.

Reduce the number of temporary objects being used, especially in loops.

Avoid creating temporary objects within frequently called methods.

Presize collection objects.

Reuse objects where possible.

Empty collection objects before reusing them. (Do not shrink them unless they are very large.)

Use custom conversion methods for converting between data types (especially strings and streams) to reduce the number of temporary objects.

Define methods that accept reusable objects to be filled in with data, rather than methods that return objects holding that data. (Or you can return immutable objects.)

Canonicalize objects wherever possible. Compare canonicalized objects by identity. [Canonicalizing objects means having only a single reference of an object, with no copies possible].

Create only the number of objects a class logically needs (if that is a small number of objects).

Replace strings and other objects with integer constants. Compare these integers by identity.

Use primitive data types instead of objects as instance variables.

Avoid creating an object that is only for accessing a method.

Flatten objects to reduce the number of nested objects.

Preallocate storage for large collections of objects by mapping the instance variables into multiple arrays.

Use StringBuffer rather than the string concatenation operator (+).

Use methods that alter objects directly without making copies.

Create or use specific classes that handle primitive data types rather than wrapping the primitive data types.

Consider using a ThreadLocal to provide threaded access to singletons with state.

Use the final modifier on instance-variable definitions to create immutable internally accessible objects.

Use WeakReferences to hold elements in large canonical lookup tables. (Use SoftReferences for cache elements.)

Reduce object-creation bottlenecks by targeting the object-creation process.

Keep constructors simple and inheritance hierarchies shallow.

Avoid initializing instance variables more than once.

Use the clone() method to avoid calling any constructors.

Clone arrays if that makes their creation faster.

Create copies of simple arrays faster by initializing them; create copies of complex arrays faster by cloning them.

Eliminate object-creation bottlenecks by moving object creation to an alternative time.

Create objects early, when there is spare time in the application, and hold those objects until required.

Use lazy initialization when there are objects or variables that may never be used, or when you need to distribute the load of creating objects.

Use lazy initialization only when there is a defined merit in the design, or when identifying a bottleneck which is alleviated using lazy initialization.

http://java.oreilly.com/news/javaperf_0900.html

My article on basic optimizations for queries on collections (Page last updated September 2000, Added 2000-10-23, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher O'Reilly). Tips:

Use short-circuit boolean operators instead of the normal boolean operators.

Eliminate any unnecessarily repeated method calls from loops.

Eliminate unnecessary casts.

Avoid synchronization where possible.

Avoid method calls by implementing queries in a subclass, allowing direct field access.

Use temporary local variables to manipulate data fields (instance/class variables).

Use more precise object typing where possible.

Before manual tuning, HotSpot VMs are often faster than JIT VMs. But JIT VMs tend to benefit more from manual tuning and can end up faster than HotSpot VMs.

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-11-2000/jw-1117-optimize.html

Article about optimizing queries on Maps. (Page last updated November 2000, Added 2000-12-20, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher JavaWorld). Tips:

Avoid using synchronization in read-only or single-threaded queries.

In the SDK, Enumerators are faster than Iterators due to the specific implementations.

Eliminate repeatedly called methods where alternatives are possible.

Iterator.hasNext() and Enumerator.hasMoreElements() do not need to be repeatedly called when the size of the collection is known. Use collection.size() and a loop counter instead.

Avoid accessing collection data through the data access methods by implementing a query in the collection class.

Elminate repeated casts by casting once and holding the cast item in a correctly typed variable.

Reimplement the collection class to specialize for the data being held in the collection.

Reimplment the Map class to use a hash function which is more efficient for the data being mapped.

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/01/25/hash_functions.html

Optimizing hash functions: generating a perfect hash function (Page last updated January 2001, Added 2001-02-21, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher OnJava). Tips:

perfect hash functions guarantee that every key maps to a separate entry in a hashtable, and so provide more efficient hastable implementations than generic hash functions.

perfect hash functions are possible when the key data is restricted to a known set of elements.

Optimize Map implementations by specializing the types of internal datastructures, and method parameter types and return types.

Optimize Map implementations by using a specialized hash function that is optimized for the key type, rather than generic to all possible types of keys.

Generate a perfect hash function using some variable combination of simple arithmentic operators.

Perfect hash functions may require excessive amounts of memory.

Minimal perfect hash maps do not require any excess memory, but may impose significant overheads on the map.

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2002/03/20/optimization.html

Microtuning (Page last updated March 2002, Added 2002-03-25, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher OnJava). Tips:

Performance is dependent on data as well as code. Different data can make identical code perform very differently.

Always start tuning with a baseline measurement.

The System.currentTimeMillis() method is the most basic measuring tool for tuning.

You may need to repeatedly call a method in order to reliably measure its average execution time.

Minimize the possibility that CPU time will be allocated to anything other than the test while it is running by ensuring no other processes are runing during the test, and that the test remains in the foreground.

Baseline measurements normally show some useful information, e.g. the average execution time for one call to a method.

Multiplying the average time taken to execute a method or sequence of methods, by the number of times that sequence will be called in a time period, gives you an estimate of the fraction of the total time that the sequence takes.

There are three routes to tuning a method: Consider unexpected differences in different test runs; Analyze the algorithm; Profile the method.

Creating an exception is a costly procedure, because of filling in stack trace.

A profiler should ideally be able to take a snapshot of performance between two arbitrary points.

Tuning is an iterative process: you normally find one bottleneck, make changes that improve performance, test those changes, and then start again.

Algorithm changes usually provide the best speedup, but can be difficult to find.

Examining the code for the causes of the differences in speed between two variations of test runs can be useful, but is restricted to those tests for which you can devise alternatives that show significant timing variations.

Profiling is always an option and almost always provides something that can be speeded up. But the law of diminishing returns kicks in after a while, leaving you with bottlenecks that are not worth speeding up, because the potential speedup is too small for the effort required.

Generic integer parsing (as with the Integer constructors and methods) may be overkill for converting simple integer formats.

Simple static methods are probably best left to be inlined by the JIT compiler rather than by hand.

String.equals() is expensive if you are only testing for an empty string. It is quicker to test if the length of the string is 0.

Set a target speedup to reach. With no target, tuning can carry on for much longer than is needed.

A generic tuning procedure is: Identify the bottleneck; Set a performance target; Use representative data; Measure the baseline; Analyze the method; Test the change; Repeat.

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2000/12/15/formatting_doubles.html

Efficiently formatting doubles (Page last updated December 2000, Added 2000-12-20, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher OnJava). Tips:

Double.toString(double) is slow. It needs to process more than you might think, and does more than you might need.

Proprietary conversion algorithms can be significantly faster. One such algorithm is presented in the article.

Converting integers to strings can also be faster than the SDK. An algorithm successively stripping off the highest is used in the article.

Formatting numbers using java.text.DecimalFormat is always slower than Double.toString(double), because it first calls Double.toString(double) then parses and converts the result.

Formatting using a proprietary conversion algorithm can be faster than any of the methods discussed so far, if the number of digits being printed is not large. The actual time taken depends on the number of digits being printed.

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/09/25/optimization.html

Multiprocess JVMs (Page last updated September 2001, Added 2001-10-22, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher OnJava). Tips:

Using or implementing a multiprocess framework to combine Java processes into one JVM can save on memory space overheads and reduce startup time.

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/12/05/optimization.html

Measuring JDBC performance (Page last updated December 2001, Added 2001-12-26, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher OnJava). Tips:

Effectively profiling distributed applications can be difficult. I/O can show up as significant in profiling, simply because of the nature of a distributed application.

It can be unclear whether threads blocking on reads and writes are part of a significant bottleneck or simply a side issue.

When profiling, it is usually worthwhile to have separate measurements available for the communication subsystems.

Wrapping the JDBC classes provides an effective technique for measuring database calls.

[Article discusses how to create JDBC wrapers to measure the performance of database calls].

If more than a few rows of a query are being read, then the ResultSet.next() method can spend a significant amount of time fetching rows from the database, and this time should be included in measurements of database access.

JDBC wrappers are simple and robust, and require very little alteration to the application using them (i.e, are low maintenance), so they are suitable to be retained within a deployed application.

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/08/22/optimization.html

Catching OutOfMemoryErrors (Page last updated August 2001, Added 2001-10-22, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher OnJava). Tips:

-Xmx and -Xms (-mx and -ms) specify the heap max and starting sizes. Runtime.totalMemory() gives the current process size, Runtime.maxMemory() (available from SDK 1.4) gives the -Xmx value.

Repeatedly allocating memory by creating objects and holding onto them will expand the process to its maximum possible size. This technique can also be used to flush memory.

If a process gets too large, the operating system will start paging the process causing a severe decrease in performance.

It is reasonable to catch the OutOfMemoryError if you can restore your application to a known state that can proceed with processing. For example, daemon service threads can often do this.

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/10/23/optimization.html

The RandomAccess interface. (Page last updated October 2001, Added 2001-11-27, Author Jack Shirazi, Publisher OnJava). Tips:

A java.util.List object which implements RandomAccess should be faster when using List.get() than when using Iterator.next().

Use instanceof RandomAccess to test whether to use List.get() or Iterator.next() to traverse a List object.

[Article describes how to guard the test to support all versions of Java].

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~mdw/proj/java-nbio/

Whoopee!! A non-blocking I/O library for Java. This is the single most important functionality missing from the SDK for scalable server applications. The important class is SelectSet which allows you to multiplex all your i/o streams. If you want a scalable server and can use this class then DO SO. NOTE THAT SDK 1.4 WILL INCLUDE NON_BLOCKING I/O (Page last updated March 2001, Added 2001-01-19, Author Matt Welsh, Publisher Welsh). Tips:

[The system select(2)/poll(2) functions allow you to take any collection of i/o streams and ask the operating system to check whether any of them can execute read/write/accept without blocking. The system call will block if requested until any one of the i/o streams is ready to execute. Before Java, no self-respecting server would sit on multiple threads in blocked i/o mode, wasting thread resources: instead select/poll would have been used.]

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jch/java/optimization.html

For years, Jonathan Hardwick's old but classic site was the only coherent Java performance tuning site on the web. He built it while doing his PhD. It wasn't updated beyond March 1998, when he moved to Microsoft, but most tips are still useful and valid. The URL is for the top page, there are another eight pages. Thanks Jonathan. (Page last updated March 1998, Added 2000-10-23, Author Jonathan Hardwick, Publisher Hardwick). Tips:

Don't optimize as you go. Write your program concentrating on clean, correct, and understandable code.

Use profiling to find out where that 80% of execution time is going, so you know where to concentrate your effort.

Always run "before" and "after" benchmarks.

Use the right algorithms and data structures.

Compile with optimization flag, javac -O.

Use a JIT.

Multithread for multi-processor machines.

Use clipping to reduce the amount of work done in repaint()

Use double buffering to improve perceived speed.

Use image strips or compression to speed up downloading times.

Animation in Java Applets from JavaWorld and Performing Animation from Sun are two good tutorials.

Use high-level primitives; it's much faster to call drawPolygon() on a bunch of points than looping with drawLine().

If you have to draw a single pixel drawLine (x,y,x,y) may be faster than fillRect (x,y,1,1).

Use Buffered I/O classes.

Avoid synchronized methods if you can.

Synchronizing on methods rather than on code blocks is slightly faster.

Use exceptions only where you really need them.

Use StringBuffer instead of +.

Use System.arraycopy() and any other optimized API's available from the SDK.

Replace the generic standard classes with faster implementations specific to the application.

Create subclasses to override methods with faster versions.

Avoid expensive constructs and data structures, e.g. one-dimensional array is faster than a two-dimensional array.

Use the faster switch bytecode.

Use private and static methods, and final classes, to encourage inlining by the compiler.

Reuse objects.

Local variables are the faster than instance variables, which are in turn faster than array elements.

ints are the fastest data type.

Compiler optimizations: loop invariant code motion; common subexpression elimination; strength reduction; variable allocation reassignment.

Use java -prof or other profiler.

Use a timing harness to run benchmarks.

Use a memory measurement harness to run benchmarks.

Call system.gc() before every timing run to minimize inconsistent results due to garbage collection in the middle of a run.

Use JAR or zip files.

If size is a constraint: use SDK classes wherever possible; inherit whatever possible; put common code in one place; initialize big arrays at runtime by parsing a string; use short names;

http://www.ddjembedded.com/resources/articles/2001/0112g/0112g.htm

Balancing Network Load with Priority Queues (Page last updated December 2001, Added 2002-02-22, Author Frank Fabian, Publisher Dr. Dobb's). Tips:

Hardware traffic managers redirect user requests to a farm of servers based on server availability, IP address, or port number. All traffic is routed to the load balancer, then requests are fanned out to servers based on the balancing algorithm.

Popular load-balancing algorithms include: server availability (find a server with available processing capability); IP address management (route to the nearest server by IP address); port number (locate different types of servers on different machines, and route by port number); HTTP header checking (route by URI or cookie, etc).

Web hits should cater for handling peak hit rate, not the average rate.

You can model hit rates using gaussian distribution to determine the average hit rate per time unit (e.g. per second) at peak usage, then a poisson probability gives the probability of a given number of users simulatneously hitting the server within that time unit. [Article gives an example with gaussian fitted to peak traffic of 4000 users with a standard deviation of 20 minutes resulting in an average of 1.33 users per second at the peak, which in turn gives the probabilities that 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 users hitting the server within one second as 26%, 35%, 23%, 10%, 3%, 1%, 0.2%. Service time was 53 milliseconds, which means that the server can service 19 hits per second without the service rate requiring requests being queued.]

System throughput is the arrival rate divided by the service rate. If the ratio becomes greater than one, requests exceed the system capability and will be lost or need to be queued.

If requests are queued because capacity is exceeded, the throughput must drop sufficiently to handle the queued requests or the system will fail (the service rate must increase or arrival rate decrease). If the average throughput exceeds 1, then the system will fail.

Sort incoming requests into different priority queues, and service the requests according to the priorities assigned to each queue. [Article gives the example where combining user and automatic requests in one queue can result in a worst case user wait of 3.5 minutes, as opposed to less than 0.1 seconds if priority queues are used].

[Note that Java application servers often do not show a constant service time. Instead the service time often increases with higher concurrency due to non-linear effects of garbage collection].

http://library.cs.tuiasi.ro/programming/java/cutting_edge_java_game_programming/ewtoc.html

"Cutting Edge Java Game Programming". Oldish but still useful intro book to games programming using Java. (Page last updated 1996, Added 2001-06-18, Author Neil Bartlett, Steve Simkin , Publisher Coriolis). Tips:

AWT components are not useful as game actors (sprites) as they do not overlap well, nor are they good at being moved around the screen.

Celled image files efficiently store an animated image by dividing an image into a rectangular grid of cells, and allocating a different animation image to each cell. A sequence of similar images (as you would have for an animation) will be stored and transferred efficiently in most image formats.

Examining pixels using PixelGrabber is slow.

drawImage() can throw away and re-load images in response to memory requirements, which can make things slow.

Pre-load and pre-scale images before using them to get a smoother and faster display.

The more actors (sprites), the more time it takes to draw and the slower the game appears.

Use double-buffering to move actors (sprites), by redrawing the actor and background for the relevant area.

Redraw speed depends on: how quickly each object is drawn; how many objects are drawn; how much of each object is drawn; the total number of drawing operations. You need to reduce some or all of these until you get to about 30 redraws per second.

Don't draw actors or images that cannot be seen.

If an actor is not moving then incorporate the actor as part of the background.

Only redraw the area that has changed, e.g. the old area where an actor was, and the new area where it is. Redrawing several small areas is frequently faster than drawing one large area. For the redraws, eliminate overlapping areas and merge adjacent (close) areas so that the number of redraws is kept to a minimum.

Put slow and fast drawing requirements in separate threads.

Bounding-box detection can use circles for the bounding box which requires a simple radii detection.

Load sounds in a background thread.

Make sure you have a throttle control that can make the game run slower (or pause) when necessary.

The optimal network topology for network games depends on the number of users.

If the cumulative downloading of your applet exceeds the player?s patience, you?ve lost a customer.

The user interface should always be responsive. A non-responsive window means you will lose your players. Give feedback on necessary delays. Provide distractions when unavoidable delays will be lengthy [more than a few seconds].

Transmission time varies, and is always slow compared to operations on the local hardware. You may need to decide the outcome of the action locally, then broadcast the result of the action. This may require some synchronization resolution.

Latency between networked players can easily lead to de-synchronized action and player frustration. Displays should locally simulate remote action as continuing current activities/motions, until the display is updated. On update, the actual current situation should be smoothly resolved with the simulated current situation.

Sending activity updates more frequently ensures smoother play and better synchronization between networked players, but requires more CPU effort and so affects the local display. In order to avoid adversely affecting local displays, send actvity updates from a low priority thread.

Discard any out-of-date updates: always use the latest dated update.

A minimum broadcast delay of one-third the average network connection travel time is appropriate. Once you exceed this limit, the additional traffic can cause more grief than benefit.

Put class files into a (compressed) container for network downloading.

Avoid repeatedly evaluating invariant expressions in a loop.

Take advantage of inlining where possible (using final, private and static keywords, and compiling with javac -O)

Profile the code to determine the expensive methods (e.g. using the -prof option)

Use a dissassembler (e.g. like javap) to determine which of various alternative coding formulations produces smaller bytecode.

To reduce the number of class files and their sizes: use the SDK classes as much as possible; and implement common functionality in one place only.

To optimize speed: avoid synchronized methods; use buffered I/O; reuse objects; avoid unnecessary screen painting.

Raycasting is faster than raytracing. Raycasting maps 2D data into a 3D world, drawing entire vertical lines using one ray. Use precalculated values for trignometric and other functions, based on the angle increments chosen for your raycasting.

In the absence of a JIT, the polygon drawing routines fron the AWT are relatively efficient (compared to array manipulation) and may be faster than texture mapping.

Without texture mapping, walls can be drawn faster with one call to fillPolygon (rather than line by line).

An exponential jump search algorithm can be used to reduce ray casts - by quickly finding boundaries where walls end (like a binary search, but double increments until your overshoot, then halving increments from the last valid wall position).

It is usually possible to increase performance at the expense of image quality and accuracy. Techniques include reducing pixel depth or display resolution, field interlacing, aliasing. The key, however, is to degrade the image in a way that is likely to be undetectable or unnoticeable to the user. For example a moving player often pays less attention to image quality than a resting or static player.

Use information gathered during the rendering of one frame to approximate the geometry of the next frame, speeding up its rendering.

If the geometry and content is not too complicated, binary space partition trees map the view according to what the player can see, and can be faster than ray casting.

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-03-2001/jw-0323-performance.html

Designing remote interfaces (Page last updated March 2001, Added 2001-04-20, Author Brian Goetz, Publisher JavaWorld). Tips:

Remote object creation has overheads: several objects needed to support the remote object are also created and manipulated.

Remote method invocations involve a network round-trip and marshalling and unmarshaling of parameters. This adds together to impose a significant latency on remote method invocations.

Different object parameters can have very different marshalling and unmarshaling costs.

A poorly designed remote interface can kill a program's performance.

Excessive remote invocation network round-trips are a huge performance problem.

Calling a remote method that returns multiple values contained in a temporary object (such as a Point), rather than making multiple consecutive method calls to retrieve them individually, is likely to be more efficient. (Note that this is exactly the opposite of the advice offered for good performance of local objects.)

Avoid unnecessary round-trips: retrieve several related items simultaneously in one remote invocation, if possible.

Avoid returning remote objects when the caller may not need to hold a reference to the remote object.

Avoid passing complex objects to remote methods when the remote object doesn't necessarily need to have a copy of the object.

If a common high-level operation requires many consecutive remote method calls, you need to revisit the class's interface.

A naively designed remote interface can lead to an application that has serious scalability and performance problems.

[Article gives examples showing the effect of applying the listed advice].

http://www.glenmccl.com/jperf/

Glen McCluskey's paper with 30 tuning tips, now free. (Page last updated October 1999, Added 2000-10-23, Author Glen McCluskey, Publisher McCluskey). Tips:

Faster algorithms are better.

Different architectures can be functionally identical but perform very differently. Keep performance in mind at the design stage.

Use the fastest available JVM.

Use static variables for fields that only need to be assigned once.

Reuse objects where reasonable, e.g. nodes of a linked list.

Inline methods manually where appropriate. [Better to use a preprocessor].

Keep methods short and simple to make them automatic inlining candidates.

final classes can be faster.

Synchronized methods are slower than the identical non-synchronized one.

Consider using non-synchronized classes and synchronized-wrappers.

Access to private members of inner classes from the enclosing class goes by a method call even if not intended to.

Use StringBuffer instead of the '+' String concatentation operator.

Use char[] arrays directly to create Strings rather than StringBuffers.

'==' is faster than equals().

intern() Strings to enable identity (==) comparisons.

Convert strings to char[] arrays to process characters, rather than accessing characters one at a time using String.charAt().

Creating Doubles from strings is slow.

Buffer i/o.

MessageFormat is slow.

Reuse objects.

File information such as File.length() requires a system call and can be slow.

Use System.arraycopy() to copy arrays.

ArrayList is faster than Vector.

Preset array capacity to as large as will be required.

LinkedList is faster than ArrayList for inserting elements to the front of the array, but slower at indexed lookup.

Program using interfaces so that the actual structure can be easily swapped to improve performance.

Use the -g:none option to the javac compiler.

Primitive data wrapper classes (e.g. Integer) are slower than using the primitive data directly.

Null out references when they are no longer used so that garbage collection can reclaim their space.

Use SoftReferences to recycle memory when required.

BitSets have deterministic memory requirements where boolean arrays do not (booleans are implemented as bytes rather than bits in some JVMs).

Use sparse arrays to hold widely spaced indexable data.

http://www.sun.com/solaris/java/wp-java/6.html

Performance tuning part of a white paper about Java on Solaris 2.6. (Page last updated 2000, Added 2000-10-23, Author ?, Publisher Sun). Tips:

To profile I/O calls, use a profiler or use truss and look for read() and write() system calls.

Buffer I/O. Tune the buffer size (bigger is usually better if memory is available).

Use char arrays for all character processing in loops, rather than using the String or StringBuffer classes.

Avoid character processing using methods (e.g. charAt(), setCharAt()) inside a loop.

Set the initial StringBuffer size to the maximum string length, if it is known.

StringTokenizer is very inefficient, and can be optimized by storing the string and delimiter in a character array instead of in String, or by storing the highest delimiter character to allow a quicker check.

Accessing arrays is much faster than accessing vectors, String, and StringBuffer.

Use System.arraycopy() to improve performance.

Vector is convenient to use, but inefficient. Ensure that elementAt() is not used inside a loop.

FastVector is faster than Vector by making the elementData field public, thus avoiding (synchronized) calls to elementAt().

Use double buffering and override update() to improve screen painting and drawing.

Use custom LayoutManagers.

Repaint only the damaged regions (use ClipRect).

To improve image handling: use MediaTracker; use your own imageUpdate() method; pre-decode and store the image in an array - image decoding time is greater than loading time. Pre-decoding using PixelGrabber and MemoryImageSource should combine multiple images into one file for maximum speed.

Increase the initial heap size from the 1-MByte default with -ms and -mx [-Xms and -Xmx].

Use -verbosegc.

Take size into account when allocating arrays (for instance, if short is big enough, use it instead of int.

Avoid allocating objects in loops (readLine() is a common example).

Minimize synchronization.

Polling is only acceptable when waiting for outside events and should be performed in a "side" thread. Use wait/notify instead.

Move loop invariants outside the loop.

Make tests as simple as possible.

Perform the loop backwards (this actually performs slightly faster than forward loops do). [Actually it is converting the test to compare against 0 that makes the difference].

Use only local variables inside a loop; assign class fields to local variables before the loop.

Move constant conditionals outside loops.

Combine similar loops.

Nest the busiest loop, if loops are interchangeable.

Unroll the loop, as a last resort.

Convert expressions to table Lookups.

Use caching.

Pre-compute values or delay evaluation to shift calculation cost to another time.

[Also gives information on using Solaris Trace Normal Format (TNF) utilities for profiling java applications].

http://www.javareport.com/html/from_pages/article.asp?id=252

Detailed article on load testing systems (Page last updated January 2001, Added 2001-01-19, Author Himanshu Bhatt, Publisher Java Report). Tips:

Internet systems should be load-tested throughout development.

Load testing can provide the basis for: Comparing varying architectural approaches; Performance tuning; Capacity planning.

Initially you should identify the probable performance and scalability based on the requirements. You should be asking about: numbers of users/components; component interactions; throughput and transaction rates; performance requirements.

Factor in batch requirements and performance characteristics of dependent (sub)systems. Note that additional layers, like security, add overheads to performance.

Logging and stateful EJB can degrade performance.

After the initial identification phase, the target should be for a model architecture that can be load-tested to feedback information.

Scalability hotspots are more likely to exist in the tiers that are shared across multiple client sessions.

Performance measurements should be from presentation start to presentation completion, i.e. user clicks button (start) and information is displayed (completion).

Use load-test suites and frameworks to perform repeatable load testing.

http://www.devx.com/free/articles/2000/maso01/maso01-1.asp

Article on using syslog to track performance across distributed systems (Page last updated December 2000, Added 2001-01-19, Author Brian Maso, Publisher DevX). Tips:

Use syslog to log distributed system performance.

Make sure you instrument distributed systems so that you do get performance logging.

http://www.as400.ibm.com/developer/java/topics/jdbctips.html

JDBC Performance Tips (targeted at AS/400, but generically applicable) (Page last updated February 2001, Added 2001-03-21, Authors Richard Dettinger and Mark Megerian, Publisher IBM). Tips:

Move to the latest releases of Java as they become available.

Use prepared statements (PreparedStatement class) [article provides coded example of using Statement vs. PreparedStatement].

Note that two database calls are made for each row in a ResultSet: one to describe the column, the second to tell the db where to put the data. PreparedStatements make the description calls at construction time, Statements make them on every execution.

Avoid retrieving unnecessary columns: don't use "SELECT *".

If you are not using stored procedures or triggers, turn off autocommit. All transaction levels operate faster with autocommit turned off, and doing this means you must code commits. Coding commits while leaving autocommit on will result in extra commits being done for every db operation.

Use the appropriate transaction level. Increasing performance costs for transaction levels are: TRANSACTION_NONE; TRANSACTION_READ_UNCOMMITTED; TRANSACTION_READ_COMMITTED; TRANSACTION_REPEATABLE_READ; TRANSACTION_SERIALIZABLE. Note that TRANSACTION_NONE, with autocommit set to true gives access to triggers, stored procedures, and large object columns.

Store string and char data as Unicode (two-byte characters) in the database.

Avoid expensive database query functions such as: getBestRowIdentifier; getColumns; getCrossReference; getExportedKeys; getImportedKeys; getPrimaryKeys; getTables; getVersionColumns.

Use connection pooling, either explicitly with your own implementation, or implicitly via a product that supports connection pooling.

Use blocked fetchs (fetching table data in blocks), and tailor the block size to reduce calls to the database, according to the amount of data required.

Use batch updates (sending multiple rows to the database in one call).

Use stored procedures where appropriate. These benefit by reducing JDBC complexity, are faster as they use static SQL, and move execution to the server and potentially reduce network trips.

Use the type-correct get() method, rather than getObject().

http://www.patrick.net/jpt/index.html

Patrick Killelea's Java performance tips. (Page last updated 1999, Added 2000-10-23, Author Patrick Killelea, Publisher Killelea). Tips:

System.currentTimeMillis may take up to 0.5 milliseconds to execute.

The architecture and algorithms of your program are much more important than any low-level optimizations you might perform.

Tune at the highest level first.

Make the common case fast (Amdahl's advice).

Use what you know about the runtime platform or usage patterns.

Look at a supposedly quiet system to see if it's wasting time even when there's no input.

Keep small inheritance chains.

Use stack (local) variables in preference to class variables.

Merge classes.

drawPolygon() is faster than using drawLine() repeatedly.

Don't create too may objects.

Reuse objects if possible.

Beware of object leaks (references to objects that are never nulled).

Accessor methods increase overhead.

Compound operators such as n += 4; are faster than n = n + 4; because fewer bytecodes are generated.

Shifting by powers of two is faster than multiplying.

Multiplication is faster than exponentiation.

int increments are faster than byte or short increments.

Floating point increments are much slower than any integral increment.

Memory access from better to worse: local vars; supersuperclass instance variable; superclass instance var; class instance var; class static var; array elements.

It can help to copy slower-access vars to fast local vars if you are going to operate on them repeatedly, as in a loop.

Use networking timeouts, TCP_NODELAY, SO_TIMEOUT, especially in case of dying DNS servers.

Buffer network io. [or read explicitly in chunks].

Avoid reverse DNS where you can.

Use UDP rather than TCP if speed is more important than accuracy.

Use threads. Prioritize threads. Use notify instead of notifyAll. Use synchronization sparingly.

Counting down is often faster than counting up. [the loop test comparison to 0 is what matters].

Keep synchronized methods out of loops if you possibly can.

Avoid excessive String manipulation.

Use String Buffers or Arrays rather than String.

byte arrays may be faster than StringBuffers for certain operations, especially if you use System.arraycopy().

Use StringBuffer rather than the + operator.

Watch out for slow fonts, Fonts vary in speed of rendering.

Keep the paint method small. It will get called a lot.

Double buffer where possible.

For some applications that access the date a lot, it can help to set the local timezone to be GMT, so that no conversion has to take place.

Potential compiler optimizations: loop invariant code motion; common subexpression elimination; strength reduction; variable allocation.

Don't turn off native threads.

Use .jar files.

Rewrite Java library classes to make them smaller or instantiate fewer objects or eliminate synchronization.

Install classes locally.

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/extra/fullscreen/

Tutorial on the full screen capabilities in the 1.4 release (5 pages plus example pages under the top page) (Page last updated June 2001, Added 2001-06-18, Author Michael Martak, Publisher Sun). Tips:

The full-screen exclusive mode provides maximum image display and drawing performance by allowing direct drawing to the screen.

Use java.awt.GraphicsDevice.isFullScreenSupported() to determine if full-screen exclusive mode is available. If it is not available, full-screen drawing can still be used, but better performance will be obtained by using a fixed size window in normal screen mode. Full-screen exclusive applications should not be resizable.

Turn off decoration using the setUndecorated() method.

Change the screen display mode (size, depth and refresh rate), to the best match for your image bit depth and display size so that scaling and other image alterations can be avoided or minimized.

Don't define the screen painting code in the paint() method called by the AWT thread. Define your own rendering loop for screen drawing, to be executed in any thread other than the AWT thread.

Use the setIgnoreRepaint() method on your application window and components to turn off all paint events dispatched from the operating system completely, since these may be called during inappropriate times, or worse, end up calling paint, which can lead to race conditions between the AWT event thread and your rendering loop.

Do not rely on the update or repaint methods for delivering paint events.

Do not use heavyweight components, since these will still incur the overhead of involving the AWT and the platform's windowing system.

Use double buffering (drawing to an off-screen buffer, then copying the finished drawing to the screen).

Use page-flipping (changing the video pointer so that an off-screen buffer becomes the on-screen buffer, with no image copying required).

Use a flip chain (a sequence of off-screen buffers which the video pointer successively points to one after the other).

java.awt.image.BufferStrategy provides getDrawGraphics() (to get an off-screen buffer) and show() (to display the buffer on screen).

Use java.awt.BufferCapabilities to customize the BufferStrategy for optimizing the performance of your application.

If you use a buffer strategy for double-buffering in a Swing application, you probably want to turn off double-buffering for your Swing components,

Multi-buffering is only useful when the drawing time exceeds the time spent to do a show.

Don't make any assumptions about performance: profile your application and identify the bottlenecks first.

http://www.devresource.hp.com/JavaATC/JavaPerfTune/index.html

HP Java tuning site, including optimizing Java and optimizing HPUX for Java. This is the top page, but several useful pages lie off it (tips extracted for inclusion below). Includes a nice "procedure" list for tuning apps, and some useful forms for what you should record while tuning. (Page last updated 2000, Added 2000-10-23, Author ?, Publisher HP). Tips:

Have a performance target.

Consider architecture and components for bottlenecks.

Third-party components may have options that cause bottlenecks.

Having debugging turned on can cause performance problems.

Having logging turned on can cause performance problems.

Is the underlying machine powerful enough.

Carefully document any tests and changes.

Create a performance baseline.

Make one change at a time.

Be careful not to lose a winning tune because it's hidden by a bad tune made at the same time.

Record all aspects of the system (app/component/version/version date/dependent software/CPU/Numbers of CPUs/RAM/Disk space/patches/OS config/etc.)

Give the JVMs top system priority.

Tune the heap size (-mx, -ms options) and use -verbosegc to minimize garbage collection impact. A larger heap reduces the frequency of garbage collection but increases the length of time that any particular garbage collection takes.

Rules of thumbs are: 50% of free space available after a gc; set the maximum heap size to be 3-4 times the space required for the estimated maximum number of live objects; set the initial heap to size a little below the space required for the average data set, and the maximum value large enough to handle the largest data set; increase -Xmn for applications that create many short-lived objects [is -Xmn a standard option?]. [These rules of thumb should only be considered as starting points. Ultimately you need to tune the VM heap empirically, i.e. by trial and error].

You may need to add flags to third party products running in the JVM to eliminate explicit calls to garbage collect (VisiBroker has this known problem).

Watch out for bottlenecks introduced from third party products. Make sure you know and use the options available, many of which can affect performance (for better or worse). Document the changes you make so that you will be able to reproduce the performance.

computationally intensive applications should increase the number of CPUs to increase overall system performance and throughput.

Be certain that the application's CPU usage is a factor limiting performance: often, highly contended locks and garbage collections that are too frequent will make the system look busy, but little work is done by the application.

[Some nice detailed description on how to profile and analyze application problems, from the HP system and JVM level at http://www.devresource.hp.com/JavaATC/JavaPerfTune/symptoms_solutions.html.]

http://www.sys-con.com/java/article.cfm?id=671

J2EE Application server performance (Page last updated April 2001, Added 2001-04-20, Author Misha Davidson, Publisher Java Developers Journal). Tips:

Good performance has sub-second latency (response time) and hundreds of (e-commerce) transactions per second.

Avoid n-way database joins: every join has a multiplicative effect on the amount of work the database has to do. The performance degradation may not be noticeable until large datasets are involved.

Avoid bringing back thousands of rows of data: this can use a disproportionate amount of resources.

Cache data when reuse is likely.

Avoid unnecessary object creation.

Minimize the use of synchronization.

Avoid using the SingleThreadModel interface for servlets: write thread-safe code instead.

ServletRequest.getRemoteHost() is very inefficient, and can take seconds to complete the reverse DNS lookup it performs.

OutputStream can be faster than PrintWriter. JSPs are only generally slower than servlets when returning binary data, since JSPs always use a PrintWriter, whereas servlets can take advantage of a faster OutputStream.

Excessive use of custom tags may create unnecessary processing overhead.

Using multiple levels of BodyTags combined with iteration will likely slow down the processing of the page significantly.

Use optimistic transactions: write to the database while checking that new data is not be overwritten by using WHERE clauses containing the old data. However note that optimistic transactions can lead to worse performance if many transactions fail.

Use lazy-loading of dependent objects.

For read-only queries involving large amounts of data, avoid EJB objects and use JavaBeans as an intermediary to access manipulate and store the data for JSP access.

Use stateless session EJBs to cache and manage infrequently changed data. Update the EJB occasionally.

Use a dedicated session bean to perform and cache all JNDI lookups in a minimum number of requests.

Minimize interprocess communication.

Use clustering (multiple servers) to increase scalability.

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-04-2001/jw-0406-syslog.html

Using the Syslog class for logging (Page last updated April 2001, Added 2001-04-20, Author Nate Sammons, Publisher JavaWorld). Tips:

Use Syslog to log system performance.

Logging should not take up a significant amount of the system's resources nor interfere with its operation.

Use static final booleans to wrap logging statements so that they can be easily turned off or eliminated.

Beware of logging to slow external channels. These will slow down logging, and hence the application too.

http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Programming/PerfTuning/

Glen McCluskey's article on tuning Java I/O performance. Weak on serialization tuning. (Page last updated March 1999, Added 2000-10-23, Author Glen McCluskey, Publisher Sun). Tips:

Avoid accessing the disk.

Avoid accessing the underlying operating system.

Avoid method calls.

Avoid processing bytes and characters individually.

Use buffering either at the class level or at the array level.

Disable line buffering.

MessageFormat is slow.

Reuse objects.

Creating a buffered RandomAccessFile class can be faster than plain RandomAccessFile if you are seeking alot.

Compression can help I/O, but only sometimes.

Use caching to speed I/O.

Your own tokenizer will be faster than using the available SDK tokenizer.

Many java.io.File methods are system calls which can be slow.

http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/ebeans/ejbperformance/

Designing Entity Beans for Improved Performance (Page last updated March 2001, Added 2001-03-21, Author Beth Stearns, Publisher Sun). Tips:

Remember that every call of an entity bean method is potentially a remote call.

Designing with one access method per data attribute should only be used where remote access will not occur, i.e. entities are guaranteed to be in the same container.

Use a value object which encapsulates all of an entity's data attributes, and which transfers all the data in one network transfer. This may result in large objects being transferred though.

Group entity bean data attributes in subsets, and use multiple value objects to provide remote access to those subsets.

http://www.bastie.de/resource/res/mjp.pdf and http://www.bastie.de/java/mjperformance/contents.html

Performance tuning report in German. Thanks to Peter Kofler for extracting the tips. (Page last updated November 2001, Added 2001-07-20, Author Sebastian Ritter, Publisher Ritter). Tips:

Performance optimizations vary in effect on different platforms. Always test for your platforms.

Reasons not to optimize: can lead to unreadable source code; can cause new errors; optimizations are often compiler/JVM/platform dependent; can lose object orientation.

Reasons to optimize: application uses too much memory/processor/I/O; application is unnaceptably slow.

Don't optimize before you have at least a functioning prototype and some identified bottlenecks.

Try to optimize the design first before targeting the implementation.

Profile applications. Use the 80/20 rull which suggests that 80% of the work is done in 20% of the code.

Target loops in particular.

Monitor running applications to maintain performance.

Plan and budget for some resources to optimize the application. Try to have or develop a couple of performance experts.

Specify performance in the project requirements, and specify seperate performance requirements for the various layers of the application.

Consider the effects of performance at the analysis stage, and include testing of 3rd party tools.

Use a benchmark harness to make repeatable performance tests, varying the number of users, data, etc. Use profilers and logging to measure performance and identify performance problems.

Optimize the runtime system if the optimization does not require alterations to the application design or implementation.

Test various JVMs and choose the optimal JVM.

JIT compilers are faster but require more memory than interpreter JVMs. HotSpot can provide better performance and a faster startup and maintain a relatively low memory requirement.

Design in asynchronous operations so tasks are not waiting for others to finish when they don't need to.

use the right VM

use the right threading model (native vs. green)

use native compilers

give more ram to the VM

give all ram to short-lived applications to completely avoid GC

use alternate/optimizing compilers

use the right database driver

use direct JDBC drivers

expand all JDK classes into the filesystem to increase access to classes

use slot-local variables (1st 128 bit = 4 slots) (applies for interpreters only)

use int

use Arraylist instead of Vector

use own Hashtable implementations for primitives (i.e. int)

use caches

use object pools

avoid remote method calls

use callbacks to avoid blocking remote method calls

use batching for remote method calls

use the flyweight pattern to reduce object creation [The flyweight pattern uses a factory instead of 'new' to reuse objects rather than always create new ones].

use the right access modifier: static > private > final > protected > public

use inlining

use shallow hierarchies (to avoid long instantiation chains)

use empty default constructors

use direct variable access (not recommended, breaks OO)

mix model with view (not recommended, breaks OO)

use better algorithms

remove redundant code

optimize loops

unroll loops

use int as loop counter

count/test loops towards 0

use Exception terminated loops for long loops

use constants for expressions with known results, e.g. replace x = 3; ... (x does not change) ...; x += 3; with x = 3; ... (x does not change) ...; x = 6;

move code outside loops

how to optimize: 1st check for better algorithms, 2nd optimize loops

use shift for *2 and /2

do not initialize with default values (0, null)

use char arrays for mutable Strings

use arrays instead of collections

use the "private final" modifier

use System.arraycopy() to copy arrays

use Hashtable keys with fast hashcode()

do not use Strings as keys for Hashtables

use new Hashtable() instaed of Hashtable.clear() for very large Hashtables

inspect JDK source

use methods in order: static > final > instance > interface > synchronized

use own specialized methods instead of JDK's generalized ones

avoid synchronization

avoid new objects

reuse objects

use the original instead of overloaded constructors (give default parameters by your own)

avoid inner classes

use + for concenating 2 Strings, use Stringbuffer for concenating more Strings

use clone to create new objects (instead of new)

use instance.hashcode() to test for equality of intances

use native JDK implemented methods (as System.arraycopy())

avoid Exceptions (use Exceptions only for cases with probability < 50%, else use error flags)

combine multiple small try-catchs to one larger block

use Streams instead of Readers, use Reader and Writer only if you need internationalization

use buffering for io

use EOFException and ArrayOutOfBoundsException for terminating io reading loops

use transient fields to speedup serialisation

use externalization instead of serialisation

use multiple threads to increase perceived performance

use awt instead of swing for speed

use swing instead of awt for less memory

use super.paint() to initially draw something (i.e. background) to increase perceived performance

use your own wrapper for primitives (with setter methods)

use Graphics.drawPolygon() (native implemented) instead of several Graphics.drawlines().

use low priority threads to initialize graphic components in the background

use synchronized blocks instead of synchronized methods

cache (SQL) Statements for DB access

use PreparedStatements for DB access

http://java.sun.com/features/2002/03/swinggui.html

Accelerating GUI apps (after 1.4) (Page last updated March 2002, Added