The choice of microprocessors, the frequency and cache configurations of the microprocessors, the front-side bus speed and bandwidth, the amount of memory, and the number of microprocessors all have significant impacts on performance. Upgrading to newer computer platforms and processors to take advantage of new capabilities generally brings direct performance benefits to J2EE applications.

The EPIC architecture of the Itanium processor provides a robust environment for the most demanding J2EE applications. In addition to the massive address space and caches provided by the Itanium Processor Family, predication, speculation, and the processor's explicitly parallel design are very well-suited to providing high performance for the branch-intensive code in J2EE applications. Upcoming dual-core and multi-core offerings in the Itanium Processor Family will extend the capabilities of this platform even further.

The current generation of Intel Xeon® processors adds substantially to the legacy of superior performance and price/performance. In addition to expanded on-chip cache capacity and faster front-side bus, the Intel Xeon processor family now supports Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology (Intel EM64T), which allows 64-bit applications to run on the platform and to address more memory than 32-bit applications, while the same processor can also run 32-bit applications natively. This advance represents a substantial new set of capabilities with regard to J2EE support.

It is important to ensure that the capacity of all computers participating in a workload have all been upgraded adequately in order to measure a performance improvement.