Kevin J. Jones

I missed calling out the Novemeber 1.2 release of the XML suite that I work on, it’s available here. This release has much improvmed Java DOM performance & Core i7 specific optimisations.

The release is the first to make use of some new instructions introduced in Core i7 SSE 4.2 (a.k.a. the Nehalem processor) specifically designed to aid text and XML processing. It’s taken a lot of effort to tune the suite for Nehalem but it also sets us on a road towards significantly more vectorisation of the XML parser and schema validator. Vectorisation being not only significant for the performance gains it delivers today but in the way it aligns the suite for further gains as the Intel processor micro-architecture evolves.

I should also mention we have released a benchmark framework for people to use to compare XML performance on their own workloads, you can find that here. Like most benchmark frameworks it takes a bit of setting up to get the best from it but it’s a lot easier than rolling your own.

And finally, if you need any assistance with using this, there is a forum here.