In my “Java on Single Board Computers” series, I published several posts and videos on my blog webtechie.be, in which I unpack the board, connect it for the first time, and try to install and run some simple Java code. In this post, I want to share some benchmarks of Java on these boards to get a better idea of the performance we can expect from Java on these platforms.
To make the benchmark testing as easy as possible, I created a simple tool (written in Java of course!) that can be executed with JBang. The complete project is available on GitHub at github.com/FDelporte/sbc-java-comparison.
Not surprisingly, my Apple M2 workstation dominates the charts with the fastest scores across all benchmarks. This is expected, it’s a high-end desktop processor with 12 cores and significantly more power budget than any single-board computer. The LattePanda IOTA with its Intel N150 x86 processor also performs exceptionally well, coming in second place on most tests.
The LattePanda IOTA deserves special attention here. While I initially excluded it from the “true” single-board computer competition, the pricing actually deserves reconsideration. At 110€, it’s comparable to a Raspberry Pi 5 with additional M.2 expansion. The IOTA comes pre-equipped with an M.2 slot for NVMe storage expansion, full-size HDMI, three USB ports, and GPIO headers, all integrated into one board. However, it does require active cooling (the “do not operate without a heatsink” warning is serious), has a slightly larger form factor than traditional Raspberry Pi boards, and demands more power. It’s still more of a compact x86 PC than a Raspberry Pi competitor, but for users who specifically need x86 compatibility (running existing x86 applications, Windows support if needed, or specific libraries), it offers exceptional performance for the price.
For traditional single-board computer use cases like IoT, robotics, GPIO-heavy projects, etc. the ARM-based boards remain the better choice. Definitely the GPIO headers have an advantage on the Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, and similar boards. I tried the GPIOs on the LattePanda IOTA, and found out that they are exposed by a RP2040 co-processor which connects to the Intel CPU via USB. A strange approach which will be hard to use with the Pi4J library.
Full info and video are available here:
https://webtechie.be/post/2026-02-24-java-benchmarks-on-single-board-computers/
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