Re: RFC: Writing Solaris Device Drivers in Java

["Peter Teoh" <htmldeveloper@gmail.com>]

Thank you for the comments.

>
>  I think the device driver reuse between the various C-kernels is pretty big.
>  For efficiency and since the low level stuff is a major part of device
>  drivers, I cant see a Java solution. I guess we would see drivers in Forth before :)

not sure about forth, but fortran is claimed to be faster than C,
based on ease of optimization reason:

http://www.idiom.com/~zilla/Computer/javaCbenchmark.html

For a surprising benchmark dated Oct2007, this guy started off without
knowing who will win:

http://www.stefankrause.net/wp/?p=4
http://www.stefankrause.net/wp/?p=6

Looking at all those number, unbelivebly Java performed better than
gcc in several ways. To quote the author:

"# Saying that C is generally several times faster than java is -
according to those benchmarks - simply wrong."

but he also cautioned:

"# Saying that Java is faster than C can also be pretty wrong,
especially if you have to stick with one JVM."

http://www.freewebs.com/godaves/javabench_revisited/
http://kano.net/javabench/

well, performance of speed is one thing, but other stuff like (for
desktop computing) ease of support, enhancement, and ease of use need
to be considered as well.   That's why .Net, with its huge overheads,
still has a huge followers, even though its predecessor is much more
efficient and faster, and delivering the same level of GUI programming
feature.

For embedded and server-based computing performance will still be
king.    But won't you be enticed to a new world of programming where
one or two liners can replaced 10 lines in C? With the complexity in
locking and irq handling all taken care of underneath you?   Ie,
automatic synchronization done by some other components in the kernel,
thus reducing the lines of codes?

Well.....the future is uncertain....i cannot predict it :-).   Happy
April Fool's Day (I like that joke!!!! LOL...)

-
Regards,
Peter Teoh