Running the following benchmark with 8u40 is about 2-3x slower than running it with 7u76 64 bit:

package misc.bench;

import java.util.Date;
import java.util.TimeZone;

public class TimeZoneBench {

    private static final int ITERS = 100000;

    private static void bench() {
        Date d = new Date();
        for (int i=0; i < ITERS; i++) {
            d.toString();
        }
    }
    
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        TimeZone.setDefault(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
        System.out.println(TimeZone.getDefault());
        bench(); // warmup
        long start = System.nanoTime();
        bench();
        System.out.println("Time per call : " + (System.nanoTime() - start) / ITERS + " ns");
    }
}