Let's imagine an hypothetical HFT system in Java, requiring (very) low-latency, with lots of short-lived small objects somewhat due to immutability (Scala?), thousands of connections per second, and an obscene number of messages passing around in an event-driven architecture (akka and amqp?).
For the experts out there, what would (hypothetically) be the best tuning for JVM 7? What type of code would make it happy? Would Scala and Akka be ready for this kind of systems?
Note: There has been some similar questions, like this one, but I've yet to find one covering Scala (which has its own idiosyncratic footprint in the JVM).
On my laptop the average latency of ping messages between Akka 2.3.7 actors is ~300ns and it is much less than the latency expected due to GC pauses on JVMs.
Code (incl. JVM options) & test results for Akka and other actors on Intel Core i7-2640M here.
P.S. You can find lots of principles and tips for low-latency computing on Dmitry Vyukov's site and in Martin Thompson's blog.