What is the quantitative overhead of making a JNI call?

Question

Based on performance alone, approximately how many "simple" lines of java is the equivalent performance hit of making a JNI call?

Or to try to express the question in a more concrete way, if a simple java operation such as

someIntVar1 = someIntVar2 + someIntVar3;

was given a "CPU work" index of 1, what would be the typical (ballpark) "CPU work" index of the overhead of making the JNI call?

This question ignores the time taken waiting for the native code to execute. In telephonic parlance, it is strictly about the "flag fall" part of the call, not the "call rate".

The reason for asking this question is to have a "rule of thumb" to know when to bother attempting coding a JNI call when you know the native cost (from direct testing) and the java cost of a given operation. It could help you quickly avoid the hassle to coding the JNI call only to find that the callout overhead consumed any benefit of using native code.

Edit:

Some folks are getting hung up on variations in CPU, RAM etc. These are all virtually irrelevant to the question - I'm asking for the relative cost to lines of java code. If CPU and RAM are poor, they are poor for both java and JNI so environmental considerations should balance out. The JVM version falls into the "irrelevant" category too.

This question isn't asking for an absolute timing in nanoseconds, but rather a ball park "work effort" in units of "lines of simple java code".

Answer 1

Quick profiler test yields:

Java class:

public class Main {
    private static native int zero();

    private static int testNative() {
        return Main.zero();
    }

    private static int test() {
        return 0;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        testNative();
        test();
    }

    static {
         System.loadLibrary("foo");
    }
}

C library:

#include <jni.h>
#include "Main.h"

JNIEXPORT int JNICALL 
Java_Main_zero(JNIEnv *env, jobject obj)
{
    return 0;
}

Results:

System details:

java version "1.7.0_09"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea7 2.3.3) (7u9-2.3.3-1)
OpenJDK Server VM (build 23.2-b09, mixed mode)
Linux visor 3.2.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.2.32-1 i686 GNU/Linux

---

Update: Caliper micro-benchmarks for x86 (32/64 bit) and ARMv6 are as follows:

Java class:

public class Main extends SimpleBenchmark {
    private static native int zero();
    private Random random;
    private int[] primes;

    public int timeJniCall(int reps) {
        int r = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < reps; i++) r += Main.zero();
        return r;
    }

    public int timeAddIntOperation(int reps) {
        int p = primes[random.nextInt(1) + 54];   // >= 257
        for (int i = 0; i < reps; i++) p += i;
        return p;
    }

    public long timeAddLongOperation(int reps) {
        long p = primes[random.nextInt(3) + 54];  // >= 257
        long inc = primes[random.nextInt(3) + 4]; // >= 11
        for (int i = 0; i < reps; i++) p += inc;
        return p;
    }

    @Override
    protected void setUp() throws Exception {
        random = new Random();
        primes = getPrimes(1000);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Runner.main(Main.class, args);        
    }

    public static int[] getPrimes(int limit) {
        // returns array of primes under $limit, off-topic here
    }

    static {
        System.loadLibrary("foo");
    }
}

Results (x86/i7500/Hotspot/Linux):

Scenario{benchmark=JniCall} 11.34 ns; σ=0.02 ns @ 3 trials
Scenario{benchmark=AddIntOperation} 0.47 ns; σ=0.02 ns @ 10 trials
Scenario{benchmark=AddLongOperation} 0.92 ns; σ=0.02 ns @ 10 trials

       benchmark     ns linear runtime
         JniCall 11.335 ==============================
 AddIntOperation  0.466 =
AddLongOperation  0.921 ==

Results (amd64/phenom 960T/Hostspot/Linux):

Scenario{benchmark=JniCall} 6.66 ns; σ=0.22 ns @ 10 trials
Scenario{benchmark=AddIntOperation} 0.29 ns; σ=0.00 ns @ 3 trials
Scenario{benchmark=AddLongOperation} 0.26 ns; σ=0.00 ns @ 3 trials

   benchmark    ns linear runtime
         JniCall 6.657 ==============================
 AddIntOperation 0.291 =
AddLongOperation 0.259 =

Results (armv6/BCM2708/Zero/Linux):

Scenario{benchmark=JniCall} 678.59 ns; σ=1.44 ns @ 3 trials
Scenario{benchmark=AddIntOperation} 183.46 ns; σ=0.54 ns @ 3 trials
Scenario{benchmark=AddLongOperation} 199.36 ns; σ=0.65 ns @ 3 trials

   benchmark  ns linear runtime
         JniCall 679 ==============================
 AddIntOperation 183 ========
AddLongOperation 199 ========

---

To summarize things a bit, it seems that JNI call is roughly equivalent to 10-25 java ops on typical (x86) hardware and Hotspot VM. At no surprise, under much less optimized Zero VM, the results are quite different (3-4 ops).

---

Thanks go to @Giovanni Azua and @Marko Topolnik for participation and hints.

Answer 2

So I just tested the "latency" for a JNI call to C on Windows 8.1, 64-bit, using the Eclipse Mars IDE, JDK 1.8.0_74, and VirtualVM profiler 1.3.8 with the Profile Startup add-on.

Setup: (two methods)
SOMETHING() passes arguments, does stuff, and returns arguments
NOTHING() passes in the same arguments, does nothing with them, and returns same arguments.

(each gets called 270 times)
Total run time for SOMETHING(): 6523ms
Total run time for NOTHING(): 0.102ms

Thus in my case the JNI calls are quite negligible.

Answer 3

You should actually test it yourself what the "latency" is. Latency is defined in engineering as the time it takes to send a message of zero length. In this context, it would correspond to writing the smallest Java program that invokes a do_nothing empty C++ function and compute mean and stddev of the elapsed time over 30 measurements (do couple of extra warm up calls). You might be surprised of the different average results doing the same for different JDK versions and platforms.

Only doing so will give you the final answer of whether using JNI makes sense for your target environment.