Optimizing Java

Chapter 3. Hardware and Operating Systems

Why should Java developers care about hardware?

For many years the computer industry has been driven by Moore’s Law, a hypothesis made by Intel founder Gordon Moore about long-term trends in processor capability. The law (really an observation or extrapolation) can be framed in a variety of ways, but one of the most usual is:

The number of transistors on a mass-produced chip roughly doubles every 18 months.

This phenomenon represents an exponential increase in computer power over time. It was originally cited in 1965, so represents an incredible long-term trend, almost unparalleled in the history of human development. The effects of Moore’s Law have been transformative in many (if not most) areas of the modern world.

Note

The death of Moore’s Law has been repeatedly proclaimed for decades now. However, there are very good reasons to suppose that, for all practical purposes, this incredible progress in chip technology has (finally) come to an end.

Hardware has become increasingly complex in order to make good use of the “transistor budget” available in modern computers. The software platforms that run on that hardware have also increased in complexity to exploit the new capabilities, so while software has far more power at its disposal it has come to rely on complex underpinnings to access that performance increase.

The net result of this huge increase in the performance available to the ordinary application developer has been ...