Using BigIntegers and BigDecimal on Kaffe
=========================================

Author: Dalibor Topic <robilad@kaffe.org>

Implementations
---------------

  Kaffe comes with two implementations of java.math package. The default one, 
  from GNU Classpath, is written in Java. It is available on all platforms.

  The other implementation uses GNU MP for the actual calculations on 
  BigInteger. Using the very fast GNU MP library makes it much faster than the
  default implementation.

Configuration
-------------

  When Kaffe's configure script detects the presence of GNU MP library, it 
  automatically takes care of building kaffe with GNU MP support enabled.

  Support for GNU MP can be explicitely turned off using the --without-gmp 
  configure script option.

Usage
-----

  Kaffe uses the pure java implementation by default. If you want to use the 
  fast java.math implementation, you need to run kaffe with the 
  -Xnative-big-math option.

Performance
-----------

  Running the NativeBigInteger benchmark from i2p [1] shows that kaffe on i686 
  on GNU/Linux with jit3 and jthreads is about 4 times slower than JDK 1.4.2 
  using the default, pure java implementation of java.math.

  Using the native implementation, the tables turn, and kaffe is 5 times faster
  than JDK 1.4.2.

[1] I2P is available at http://www.i2p.net. The benchmark is in the net.i2p.util 
    package.