By <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org&#x2F;u64q&#x2F;which-programs-are-fastest.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org&#x2F;u64q&#x2F;which-programs-...</a> Swift&#x27;s performance is similar to Java&#x27;s, but quite a bit faster when working with many objects: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org&#x2F;u64q&#x2F;swift.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org&#x2F;u64q&#x2F;swift.html</a> On a few benchmarks it&#x27;s faster than C as well: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org&#x2F;u64q&#x2F;compare.php?lang=swift&amp;lang2=gcc" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org&#x2F;u64q&#x2F;compare.php?lan...</a> though not most.<p>I suppose they were able to do the binary-tree benchmark so much better than Java, because Swift supports &#x27;UnsafeMutablePointers&#x27;: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org&#x2F;u64q&#x2F;program.php?test=binarytrees&amp;lang=swift&amp;id=5" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org&#x2F;u64q&#x2F;program.php?tes...</a><p>Edit: This Quora question mentions the performance of Swift before and after unsafe programs were included: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;In-terms-of-performance-speed-is-Swift-faster-than-Java" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;In-terms-of-performance-speed-is-Swift...</a> The memory safe version used to be about 24x slower than C.