My application runs much slower with 1.3/1.4 when compared with the 1.2 Production release for Solaris. Why?
Assuming that you are running a lot of bytecode make sure that you are using the correct mode of the virtual machine. For applications where small footprint and fast startup are important, use -client. For applications where overall performance is the most important, use -server. Don’t forget that -server or -client must be the first argument to java, -client is the default. If this isn’t your problem, read on for more tuning parameters you can try, and also see Java HotSpot VM Options.