C versus Java speed and memory test

I have now translated the functions that load or save MVDs from disk from Java to C. They are both moderately complex and use several classes – a good real world test. Here is the preliminary speed test for the very similar functions loadMVD and saveMVD, when run on the file kinglear.mvd averaged over 10 iterations, discounting the first result, which is always slower:

Language	Time (microseconds)	Memory (bytes)
Java (load)	46127	1104072
C (load)	1608	364544
Java (save)	56294	348752
C (save)	4844	36864

This surprises me. I have been led to believe that Java was nearly as fast as C and sometimes faster. Or so the philosophy of the JIT compiler goes. And no, I didn't include the JIT compilation or JVM load or save time, but in both cases I took the time at the start and end of the relevant function. And no, I am very experienced in writing in both languages. The C version is just a translation of the Java program, but with this speed difference who wants to use Java?

The memory results were kind of expected, though. Everyone knows that Java is a memory hog.

The loadMVD function loads a binary file format on disk then parses it into an in-memory form. The saveMVD function reverses the process but is a bit more complicated because it must reconnect transposed segments.

Technique of measurement

In C I used getrusage (the ru_maxrss field) for memory and gettimeofday for timing. In Java I used System.nanoTime() and Runtime.getRuntime().freeMemory(); (after calling System.gc() the first time). The Java code was compiled with debugging off, the C code with -O3, no debugging symbols. The Java version was 1.6.0_35 on MacOSX 10.8.1, and the C compiler was gcc 4.2.1 on the same platform. Both programs were run on the commandline.