Recent changes (JDK-8049555 and JDK-8050200) are responsible for massive regression in startup time.

A simple HelloWorld application runs:

for S in `seq 1 100`; do time ~/trunks/jdk9-dev/build/linux-x86_64-normal-server-release/images/j2sdk-image/bin/java Hello; done 2>&1 | grep real | sed -e "s/0m//g" -e "s/s//g" | awk '{ sum += $2; n++ } END { if (n > 0) print sum / n; }'

...yield:

 33.3 ms -- jdk9-b30
 33.3 ms -- before JDK-8049555
 48.4 ms -- after JDK-8049555
 48.5 ms -- before JDK-8050200
 52.9 ms -- after JDK-8050200
 52.9 ms -- jdk9-b31

Both regressions seems to be caused by a heavy lifting in static initializers.