To use the JNI, or not to use the JNI (Android performance)

Question

I just added some computationally expensive code to an Android game I am developing. The code in question is a collection of collision detection routines that get called very often (every iteration of the game-loop) and are doing a large amount of computation. I feel my collision detection implementation is fairly well developed, and as reasonably fast as I can make it in Java.

I've been using Traceview to profile the code, and this new piece of collision detection code has somewhat unsurprisingly doubled the duration of my game logic. That's obviously a concern since for certain devices, this performance hit could take my game from a playable to an unplayable state.

I have been considering different ways to optimize this code, and I am wondering if by moving the code into C++ and accessing it with the JNI, if I will get some noticeable performance savings?

The above question is my main concern and my reason for asking. I've determined that the two following reasons would be other positive results from using the JNI. However, it is not enough to persuade me to port my code to C++.

• This would make the code cleaner. Since most of the collision detection is some sort of vector math, it is much cleaner to be able to use overloaded operators rather than using some more verbose vector classes in Java.

• Memory management would be simpler. Simpler you say? Well, this is a game so the garbage collector running is not welcome because the GC could end up ruining the performance of your game if it constantly has to interrupt to clean up. In C I don't have to worry about the garbage collector, so I can avoid all the ugly things I do in Java with temporary static variables and just rely on the good old stack memory of C++

Long-winded as this question may be, I think I covered all my points. Given this information, would it be worth porting my code from Java to C++ and accessing it with the JNI (for reasons of improving performance)? Also, is there a way to measure or estimate a potential performance gain?

EDIT:

So I did it. Results? Well from TraceView's perspective, it was a 6x increase in speed of my collision detection routine.

It wasn't easy getting there though. Besides having to do the JNI dance, I also had to make some optimizations that I did not expect. Mainly, using a directly allocated float buffer to pass data from Java to native. My initial attempt just used a float array to hold the data in question because the conversion from Java to C++ was more natural, but that was realllly reallllly slow. The direct buffer completely side-stepped performance issues with array copying between java and native, and left me with a 6x bump.

Also, instead of rolling my own vector class, I just used the Eigen math library. I'm not sure how much of an affect this has had on performance, but at the least, it saved me the time of dev'ing my own (less efficient) vector class.

Another lesson learned is that excessive logging is bad for performance (jic that isn't obvious).

Answer 1

Not really a direct answer to your question, but the following links might be of use to you:

• Android Developers, JNI Tips.
• Android Developers, Designing for Performance

In the second link the following is written:

Native code isn't necessarily more efficient than Java. For one thing, there's a cost associated with the Java-native transition, and the JIT can't optimize across these boundaries. If you're allocating native resources (memory on the native heap, file descriptors, or whatever), it can be significantly more difficult to arrange timely collection of these resources. You also need to compile your code for each architecture you wish to run on (rather than rely on it having a JIT). You may even have to compile multiple versions for what you consider the same architecture: native code compiled for the ARM processor in the G1 can't take full advantage of the ARM in the Nexus One, and code compiled for the ARM in the Nexus One won't run on the ARM in the G1.

Native code is primarily useful when you have an existing native codebase that you want to port to Android, not for "speeding up" parts of a Java app.

Answer 2

If you are still at a fairly early stage of game development, you can consider using a Game Engine which provides a good collision detection mechanism, like Libgdx which does a fairly good job of box2d collision detection.