performance - Java local vs instance variable access speed

Question

So my question is about variable accessing speed in Java. Today in my "CS" (if you can call it that) the teacher presented a similar example to the following of a List:

public class ListExample<T> {
    private Node<T> head;
    private Node<T> tail;

    private class Node<T> { /* ... */ }

    public void append(T content) {
        if (!isEmpty()) {
            Node<T> dummy = new Node<T>(content);
            head = dummy;
            tail = dummy;

            head.setNext(head);
            // or this
            dummy.setNext(dummy);

        } else { /* ... */ }
    }

    // more methods
    // ...
}

My question is: Would the call to head.setNext(head) be slower than dummy.setNext(dummy) ? Even if it's not noticeable. I was wondering this since head is obviously and instance var of the class and dummy is local, so would the local access be faster?

Answer 1

Ok, I've written a micro-benchmark (as suggested by @Joni & @MattBall) and here are the results for 1 x 1000000000 accesses for each a local and an instance variable:

Average time for instance variable access: 5.08E-4
Average time for local variable access: 4.96E-4

For 10 x 1000000000 accesses each:

Average time for instance variable access:4.723E-4
Average time for local variable access:4.631E-4

For 100 x 1000000000 accesses each:

Average time for instance variable access: 5.050300000000002E-4
Average time for local variable access: 5.002400000000001E-4

So it seems that local variable accesses are indeed faster that instance var accesses (even if both point to the same object).

Note: I didn't want to find this out, because of something I wanted to optimize, it was just pure interest.

P.S. Here is the code for the micro-benchmark:

public class AccessBenchmark {
    private final long N = 1000000000;
    private static final int M = 1;

    private LocalClass instanceVar;

    private class LocalClass {
        public void someFunc() {}
    }

    public double testInstanceVar() {
        // System.out.println("Running instance variable benchmark:");
        instanceVar = new LocalClass();

        long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
        for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) {
            instanceVar.someFunc();
        }

        long elapsed = System.currentTimeMillis() - start;

        double avg = (elapsed * 1000.0) / N;

        // System.out.println("elapsed time = " + elapsed + "ms");
        // System.out.println(avg + " microseconds per execution");

        return avg;
    }

    public double testLocalVar() {
        // System.out.println("Running local variable benchmark:");
        instanceVar = new LocalClass();
        LocalClass localVar = instanceVar;

        long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
        for (int i = 0 ; i < N; i++) {
            localVar.someFunc();
        }

        long elapsed = System.currentTimeMillis() - start;

        double avg = (elapsed * 1000.0) / N;

        // System.out.println("elapsed time = " + elapsed + "ms");
        // System.out.println(avg + " microseconds per execution");

        return avg;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        AccessBenchmark bench;

        double[] avgInstance = new double[M];
        double[] avgLocal = new double[M];

        for (int i = 0; i < M; i++) {
            bench = new AccessBenchmark();

            avgInstance[i] = bench.testInstanceVar();
            avgLocal[i] = bench.testLocalVar();

            System.gc();
        }

        double sumInstance = 0.0;
        for (double d : avgInstance) sumInstance += d;
        System.out.println("Average time for instance variable access: " + sumInstance / M);

        double sumLocal = 0.0;
        for (double d : avgLocal) sumLocal += d;
        System.out.println("Average time for local variable access: " + sumLocal / M);
    }
}