Benchmarks

Writing performance benchmarks in java is not as simple as getting System.currentTimeMillis() in the beginning and in the end and calculating the difference. To write valid performance benchmarks, one should use proper tools.

Simple JMH example

One of the tools for writing proper benchmark tests is JMH (opens new window). Let's say we want to compare performance of searching an element in HashSet vs TreeSet.

The easiest way to get JHM into your project - is to use maven and shade (opens new window) plugin. Also you can see pom.xml from JHM examples (opens new window).

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.0.0</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>package</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>shade</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <finalName>/benchmarks</finalName>
                        <transformers>
                            <transformer
                                    implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ManifestResourceTransformer">
                                <mainClass>org.openjdk.jmh.Main</mainClass>
                            </transformer>
                        </transformers>
                        <filters>
                            <filter>
                                <artifact>*:*</artifact>
                                <excludes>
                                    <exclude>META-INF/*.SF</exclude>
                                    <exclude>META-INF/*.DSA</exclude>
                                    <exclude>META-INF/*.RSA</exclude>
                                </excludes>
                            </filter>
                        </filters>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.openjdk.jmh</groupId>
        <artifactId>jmh-core</artifactId>
        <version>1.18</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.openjdk.jmh</groupId>
        <artifactId>jmh-generator-annprocess</artifactId>
        <version>1.18</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

After this you need to write benchmark class itself:

package benchmark;

import org.openjdk.jmh.annotations.*;
import org.openjdk.jmh.infra.Blackhole;

import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.Random;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.TreeSet;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

@State(Scope.Thread)
public class CollectionFinderBenchmarkTest {
    private static final int SET_SIZE = 10000;

    private Set<String> hashSet;
    private Set<String> treeSet;

    private String stringToFind = "8888";

    @Setup
    public void setupCollections() {
        hashSet = new HashSet<>(SET_SIZE);
        treeSet = new TreeSet<>();

        for (int i = 0; i < SET_SIZE; i++) {
            final String value = String.valueOf(i);
            hashSet.add(value);
            treeSet.add(value);
        }

        stringToFind = String.valueOf(new Random().nextInt(SET_SIZE));
    }

    @Benchmark
    @BenchmarkMode(Mode.AverageTime)
    @OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS)
    public void testHashSet(Blackhole blackhole) {
        blackhole.consume(hashSet.contains(stringToFind));
    }

    @Benchmark
    @BenchmarkMode(Mode.AverageTime)
    @OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.NANOSECONDS)
    public void testTreeSet(Blackhole blackhole) {
        blackhole.consume(treeSet.contains(stringToFind));
    }
}

Please keep in mind this blackhole.consume(), we'll get back to it later. Also we need main class for running benchmark:

package benchmark;

import org.openjdk.jmh.runner.Runner;
import org.openjdk.jmh.runner.RunnerException;
import org.openjdk.jmh.runner.options.Options;
import org.openjdk.jmh.runner.options.OptionsBuilder;

public class BenchmarkMain {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws RunnerException {
        final Options options = new OptionsBuilder()
                .include(CollectionFinderBenchmarkTest.class.getSimpleName())
                .forks(1)
                .build();

        new Runner(options).run();
    }
}

And we're all set. We just need to run mvn package (it will create benchmarks.jar in your /target folder) and run our benchmark test:

java -cp target/benchmarks.jar benchmark.BenchmarkMain

And after some warmup and calculation iterations, we will have our results:

# Run complete. Total time: 00:01:21

Benchmark                                  Mode  Cnt   Score    Error  Units
CollectionFinderBenchmarkTest.testHashSet  avgt   20   9.940 ±  0.270  ns/op
CollectionFinderBenchmarkTest.testTreeSet  avgt   20  98.858 ± 13.743  ns/op

About that blackhole.consume(). If your calculations do not change the state of your application, java will most likely just ignore it. So, in order to avoid it, you can either make your benchmark methods return some value, or use Blackhole object to consume it.

You can find more information about writing proper benchmarks in Aleksey Shipilëv's blog (opens new window), in Jacob Jenkov's blog (opens new window) and in java-performance blog: 1 (opens new window), 2 (opens new window).