Boxing, still a limit of invokedynamic?

[Jochen Theodorou]

Hi all,

I wanted to ask you of your opinion. If I am going to compile something 
like a+b-c and a,b,c are all primtives, but I won't know that the 
results will be really the primtives too, then this means I will most 
probably compile it like this:

invokedynamic("minus", invokedynamic("plus",a,b), c)

meaning the result of a+b will be an Object (since I won't know it is a 
primitive) and then there will be one boxing for that, just to unbox 
again for the minus and then box again for the result of the minus. If 
now the result is not supposed to be a primitive, then there won't be 
another unbox, till the next operation done with that value.

Now, even if the JIT is able to see through the one boxing and unboxing 
fro the result of plus, what will stay is the boxing for the result of 
the minus.... plus the many unboxing actions used when this result is 
used. Isn't that a conceptual problem? And how do others deal with that?

I am asking because I was experimenting with method signatures and for 
such plus and minus methods and got mixed results. I was expecting the 
primtive versions would achieve the best results, but that was not the 
case. a plus(int, int) had worse performance than a plus(int,Integer) or 
plus(Integer,int) in some cases and sometimes it looked like 
plus(Integer,Integer) is worse, in other cases not. Well, this is 
causing me some problems. Why do I get such strange results? I would 
assume it depends on the JIT and the boxing logic it is able to 
recognize and not.

One more thing I noticed is, that if I have a = b+c, with all of them 
being int and b+c returning object, then letting the MethodHandle do the 
conversion from Object to int is actually much worse performance wise, 
than a cast to integer and calling valueOf. Shouldn't that be at least 
equal, if not fast considering that the result of b+c was first boxed 
and then is unboxed?

Can anyone give me some advice on how to do these things?

bye Jochen

-- 
Jochen "blackdrag" Theodorou - Groovy Project Tech Lead
blog: http://blackdragsview.blogspot.com/
german groovy discussion newsgroup: de.comp.lang.misc
For Groovy programming sources visit http://groovy-lang.org