Java: GatheringByteChannel advantages?

Question

I'm wondering when the GatheringByteChannel's write methods (taking in an array of ByteBuffers) have advantages over the "regular" WritableByteChannel write methods.

I tried a test where I could use the regular vs. the gathering write method on a FileChannel, with approx 400KB/sec total in ByteBuffers of between 23-27 bytes in length in both cases. Gathering writes used an array of 64. The regular method used up approx 12% of my CPU, and the gathering method used up approx 16% of my CPU (worse than the regular method!)

This tells me it's NOT useful to use gathering writes on a FileChannel around this range of operating parameters. Why would this be the case, and when would you ever use GatheringByteChannel? (on network I/O?)

Relevant differences here:

public void log(Queue<Packet> packets) throws IOException
{
    if (this.gather)
    {
        int Nbuf = 64;
        ByteBuffer[] bbufs = new ByteBuffer[Nbuf];
        int i = 0;
        Packet p;
        while ((p = packets.poll()) != null)
        {
            bbufs[i++] = p.getBuffer();
            if (i == Nbuf)
            {
                this.fc.write(bbufs);
                i = 0;
            }
        }
        if (i > 0)
        {
            this.fc.write(bbufs, 0, i);
        }
    }
    else
    {
        Packet p;
        while ((p = packets.poll()) != null)
        {
            this.fc.write(p.getBuffer());
        }
    }
}

update:

I did some testing and the gathering approach for various lengths of ByteBuffers seems to have no benefit for file I/O. Far more relevant was the "fragmentation" of the I/O stream via byte buffer length. I changed my program so it copied a relatively large (27MB) file via reading the input into byte buffers of a particular length. The program starts to slow down significantly if the buffers are less than 256 bytes in length.

I decided to try a third option, namely to write my own simple "gathering" routine that takes buffers and consolidates them into a larger buffer before writing to a filechannel. This blows away the GatheringByteChannel write(ByteBuffer[] buffers) method for speed. (Note: The reading size is the same for all three modes of writing, so the fact that I'm creating a bunch of small ByteBuffers and using them to read I/O isn't causing a significant slowdown.) I'm kind of disappointed that Java doesn't just do this for you. Oh well.

enum GatherType { NONE, AUTOMATIC, MANUAL }

static class BufferWriter
{
    final private FileChannel fc;
    private GatherType gather = GatherType.NONE;

    BufferWriter(FileChannel f) { this.fc = f; } 

    public void setGather(GatherType gather) { this.gather=gather; }
    public void write(Queue<ByteBuffer> buffers) throws IOException
    {
        switch (this.gather)
        {
            case AUTOMATIC:
            {
                int Nbuf = 64;
                ByteBuffer[] bbufs = new ByteBuffer[Nbuf];
                int i = 0;
                ByteBuffer b;
                while ((b = buffers.poll()) != null)
                {
                    bbufs[i++] = b;
                    if (i == Nbuf)
                    {
                        this.fc.write(bbufs);
                        i = 0;
                    }
                }
                if (i > 0)
                {
                    this.fc.write(bbufs, 0, i);
                }
            }
            break;
            case MANUAL:
            {
                ByteBuffer consolidatedBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocate(4096);
                ByteBuffer b;
                while ((b = buffers.poll()) != null)
                {
                    if (b.remaining() > consolidatedBuffer.remaining())
                    {
                        consolidatedBuffer.flip();
                        this.fc.write(consolidatedBuffer);
                        consolidatedBuffer.clear();
                    }

                    if (b.remaining() > consolidatedBuffer.remaining())
                    {
                        this.fc.write(b);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        consolidatedBuffer.put(b);
                    }
                }

                consolidatedBuffer.flip();
                if (consolidatedBuffer.hasRemaining())
                {
                    this.fc.write(consolidatedBuffer);
                }
            }
            break;
            case NONE:
            {
                ByteBuffer b;
                while ((b = buffers.poll()) != null)
                {
                    this.fc.write(b);
                }
            }
            break;
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

Does packets.poll() creates every time a new Buffer? If not, your are writing wrong data in the first case.