JVM performance on Linux (vs. Solaris/Windows)

["K P" <kplkml@gmail.com>]

Sun's recently published SPECjbb_2005 numbers on Linux, Windows and
Solaris on their
Opteron system, and the Linux result is the lowest of the three by far:

Linux: http://www.spec.org/jbb2005/results/res2006q1/jbb2005-20060117-00062.html
Solaris: http://www.spec.org/jbb2005/results/res2006q1/jbb2005-20060117-00063.html
Windows: http://www.spec.org/jbb2005/results/res2006q1/jbb2005-20060117-00064.html

It's not evident if Sun spent any time analyzing and tuning the Linux
result. While the
majority of the tuning opportunities for SPECjbb_2005 are likely to be
in the JVM itself, I was
wondering (given the large spread between the OS's) if there were
other typical opportunities
to tune the Linux kernel for JVM performance and SPECjbb_2005.

There are some other results showing excellent scalability with SPECjbb_2005 on
Linux/Itanium (such as SGI's:
http://www.spec.org/jbb2005/results/res2006q2/ ), but it's
not clear if there are other opportunities for tuning unique to Linux
on Opteron, or Linux
in general that should be explored

Comments?

-kp