[dpedu]

Keeping in mind that this server appears to implement only a tiny subset of the features the ones it is benchmarked against do... No lighting, mob spawning, mob ai, redstone functionality, tree or plant growth, water/lava flow, etc.

[Aeolun]

These wouldn’t significantly affect the first 10 chunks loaded?

[misiek08]

More than a "yes, it should". While loading chunks you need to take redstone, nature and mobs into account. If you don’t - you need to find them and resolve at runtime with even bigger costs, relying solely on difference between programming languages in performance.