Faster Java on Raspberry Pi

With the official announcement of Oracle Java on Raspberry Pi, Java just got usable on the Raspberry Pi. It’s still not super-fast, but I’m seeing ~10× speedup over OpenJDK.

To install it (on Raspbian):

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-jdk
sudo update-java-alternatives -s jdk-7-oracle-armhf

By way of a baseline, here are SciMark 2.0 results on OpenJDK:

$ java -classpath ./scimark2lib.jar jnt.scimark2.commandline -large

SciMark 2.0a

Composite Score: 2.4987047508570632
FFT (1048576): 1.5550941987343943
SOR (1000x1000):   5.32030759023185
Monte Carlo : 0.6005590152716936
Sparse matmult (N=100000, nz=1000000): 2.3584905938878946
LU (1000x1000): 2.6590723561594847

java.vendor: Sun Microsystems Inc.
java.version: 1.6.0_27
os.arch: arm
os.name: Linux
os.version: 3.6.11+

Here’s what the Oracle JDK cranks out (bigger numbers → better):

$ java -classpath ./scimark2lib.jar jnt.scimark2.commandline -large

SciMark 2.0a

Composite Score: 14.94896390647437
FFT (1048576): 6.953238474333376
SOR (1000x1000):   33.91437255527547
Monte Carlo : 8.869794361002157
Sparse matmult (N=100000, nz=1000000): 9.81896340073432
LU (1000x1000): 15.188450741026523

java.vendor: Oracle Corporation
java.version: 1.7.0_40
os.arch: arm
os.name: Linux
os.version: 3.6.11+

That’s a tidy increase, and might make Processing and Arduino much easier to work with.

(It’s still not tremendously fast, though. My i7 quad-core has a composite score of nearly 1450 …)

9 comments

  1. Wow, that’s quite a difference. I was wondering if the difference is still large if you run the test without the ‘–large’ argument (so to rule out the memory/cache factor).

  2. I think ‘-large’ makes it slightly slower than the default. Running anything in Processing will be the real test.

  3. Overclocked @900MHz:

    Composite Score: 17.876462588362237
    FFT (1048576): 7.531491739085088
    SOR (1000×1000): 40.44242199114882
    Monte Carlo : 11.467679645892852
    Sparse matmult (N=100000, nz=1000000): 11.717318869332049
    LU (1000×1000): 18.223400696352392

  4. Update: I did a run on the new Raspberry Pi 2:

    Composite Score: 32.36467842514499
    FFT (1048576): 9.914229972288283
    SOR (1000×1000): 74.85007667302958
    Monte Carlo : 15.864979597493978
    Sparse matmult (N=100000, nz=1000000): 23.005031814567598
    LU (1000×1000): 38.18907406834551

    java.vendor: Oracle Corporation
    java.version: 1.7.0_40
    os.arch: arm
    os.name: Linux
    os.version: 3.18.6-v7i-aufs

    That’s quite a big difference considering the bench is using only a single core (according to the scimark FAQ it’s single-threaded).

  5. That’s a tidy improvement! I’m really finding that the Raspberry Pi 2 is a useful general purpose computer.

  6. pi3 Suse aarch64 Oracle Jdk 1.8 x64
    SciMark 2.0a

    Composite Score: 73.94354769602046
    FFT (1048576): 14.164310995231187
    SOR (1000×1000): 120.28637777812554
    Monte Carlo : 63.3999629050567
    Sparse matmult (N=100000, nz=1000000): 41.53147283811324
    LU (1000×1000): 130.33561396357564

    java.vendor: Oracle Corporation
    java.version: 1.8.0_111
    os.arch: aarch64
    os.name: Linux
    os.version: 4.4.36-8-default

  7. Hmm, some unusual differences there over my Raspbian results on a Raspberry Pi 3. I wonder if it’s due to thermal issues?

    SciMark 2.0a

    Composite Score: 67.91266516635812
    FFT (1048576): 18.20815673821697
    SOR (1000×1000): 164.1252153058329
    Monte Carlo : 25.31454674484949
    Sparse matmult (N=100000, nz=1000000): 53.511706581678546
    LU (1000×1000): 78.4037004612127

    java.vendor: Oracle Corporation
    java.version: 1.8.0_65
    os.arch: arm
    os.name: Linux
    os.version: 4.4.34-v7+

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