Stalls in Java Applications on X86 Platforms

As a popular language running on High-Level Language Virtual Machines (HLLVMs), Java is an important programming language both in industry and academia. The Java Virtual Machine is the execution platform for applications implemented with Java. One of the most significant performance bottlenecks on an x86 Instruction Set Architecture is stalling. Therefore, understanding the effect of stalls on Java applications executed on the x86 platforms is important to application development and compiler design. In this paper, a survey of stalls in Java applications on x86 platforms is carried out to gather critical information about the influence of stalls on various Java applications and the frequencies of different types of stalls in Java workloads. Based on such information, a stall-focused benchmark suite is proposed and validated.