Java Math.min/max performance

Question

EDIT: maaartinus gave the answer I was looking for and tmyklebu\'s data on the problem helped a lot, so thanks both! :)

I\'ve read a bit about how HotSpot has some \

Answer 1

Using JDK 8:

java version "1.8.0"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0-b132)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.0-b70, mixed mode)

On Ubuntu 13.10

I ran the following:

import java.util.Random;
import java.util.function.BiFunction;

public class MaxPerformance {
  private final BiFunction max;
  private final int[] array;

  public MaxPerformance(BiFunction max, int[] array) {
    this.max = max;
    this.array = array;
  }

  public double time() {
    long start = System.nanoTime();

    int m = Integer.MIN_VALUE;
    for (int i = 0; i < array.length; ++i) m = max.apply(m, array[i]);

    m = Integer.MIN_VALUE;
    for (int i = 0; i < array.length; ++i) m = max.apply(array[i], m);

    // total time over number of calls to max
    return ((double) (System.nanoTime() - start)) / (double) array.length / 2.0;
  }

  public double averageTime(int repeats) {
    double cumulativeTime = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < repeats; i++)
      cumulativeTime += time();
    return (double) cumulativeTime / (double) repeats;
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    int size = 1000000;
    Random random = new Random(123123123L);
    int[] array = new int[size];
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) array[i] = random.nextInt();

    double tMath = new MaxPerformance(Math::max, array).averageTime(100);
    double tAlt1 = new MaxPerformance(MaxPerformance::max1, array).averageTime(100);
    double tAlt2 = new MaxPerformance(MaxPerformance::max2, array).averageTime(100);

    System.out.println("Java Math: " + tMath);
    System.out.println("Alt 1:     " + tAlt1);
    System.out.println("Alt 2:     " + tAlt2);
  }

  public static int max1(final int a, final int b) {
    if (a >= b) return a;
    return b;
  }

  public static int max2(final int a, final int b) {
    return (a >= b) ? a : b; // same as JDK implementation
  }
}

And I got the following results (average nanoseconds taken for each call to max):

Java Math: 15.443555810000003
Alt 1:     14.968298919999997
Alt 2:     16.442204045

So on a long run it looks like the second implementation is the fastest, although by a relatively small margin.

In order to have a slightly more scientific test, it makes sense to compute the max of pairs of elements where each call is independent from the previous one. This can be done by using two randomized arrays instead of one as in this benchmark:

import java.util.Random;
import java.util.function.BiFunction;
public class MaxPerformance2 {
  private final BiFunction max;
  private final int[] array1, array2;

  public MaxPerformance2(BiFunction max, int[] array1, int[] array2) {
    this.max = max;
    this.array1 = array1;
    this.array2 = array2;
    if (array1.length != array2.length) throw new IllegalArgumentException();
  }

  public double time() {
    long start = System.nanoTime();

    int m = Integer.MIN_VALUE;
    for (int i = 0; i < array1.length; ++i) m = max.apply(array1[i], array2[i]);
    m += m; // to avoid optimizations!

    return ((double) (System.nanoTime() - start)) / (double) array1.length;
  }

  public double averageTime(int repeats) {
    // warm up rounds:
    double tmp = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) tmp += time();
    tmp *= 2.0;

    double cumulativeTime = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < repeats; i++)
        cumulativeTime += time();
    return cumulativeTime / (double) repeats;
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    int size = 1000000;
    Random random = new Random(123123123L);
    int[] array1 = new int[size];
    int[] array2 = new int[size];
    for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
        array1[i] = random.nextInt();
        array2[i] = random.nextInt();
    }

    double tMath = new MaxPerformance2(Math::max, array1, array2).averageTime(100);
    double tAlt1 = new MaxPerformance2(MaxPerformance2::max1, array1, array2).averageTime(100);
    double tAlt2 = new MaxPerformance2(MaxPerformance2::max2, array1, array2).averageTime(100);

    System.out.println("Java Math: " + tMath);
    System.out.println("Alt 1:     " + tAlt1);
    System.out.println("Alt 2:     " + tAlt2);
  }

  public static int max1(final int a, final int b) {
    if (a >= b) return a;
    return b;
  }

  public static int max2(final int a, final int b) {
    return (a >= b) ? a : b; // same as JDK implementation
  }
}

Which gave me:

Java Math: 15.346468170000005
Alt 1:     16.378737519999998
Alt 2:     20.506475350000006

The way your test is set up makes a huge difference on the results. The JDK version seems to be the fastest in this scenario. This time by a relatively large margin compared to the previous case.

Somebody mentioned Caliper. Well if you read the wiki, one the first things they say about micro-benchmarking is not to do it: this is because it's hard to get accurate results in general. I think this is a clear example of that.