Performance Issues

This is a reference list I keep to measure performance between various implementations.

It computes (ackerman 3 8). The list is from a languages shoot-out, but run on a 500Mhz machine. Some of my measurements are on a 1Ghz laptop, the latest are on my Macbook Air, so I am of at least a factor two. All my own measurements are normalized towards a 1Ghz machine. I don't treat integers as primitives in the language so I am fine with the performance.

ocaml   0.04   664   9   log
vc++  0.04  540  13  log
vc  0.05  492  14  log
mercury  0.06  1728  36  log
gcc  0.07  1504  14  log
ghc  0.07  1224  9  log
mingw32  0.08  596  14  log
delphi  0.10  604  15  log
modula2  0.11  672  0  log
bcc  0.12  608  14  log
fpascal  0.13  556  18  log
lcc  0.13  548  14  log
gnat  0.14  792  0  log
se  0.14  592  30  log
bigforth  0.15  924  13  log
pliant  0.16  3228  14  log
csharp  0.18  3280  15  log
modula3  0.18  932  24  log
smlnj  0.22  940  20  log
vpascal  0.28  600  18  log
java  0.53  4628  11  log
nice  0.64  4940  0  log
gforth  0.67  1504  15  log
poplisp  0.78  3272  10  log
*** c combinator evaluator 0.82 (GRAPH-FAKE/NO_DICK)
erlang  1.01  5268  10  log
ocamlb  1.09  380  9  log
oz  1.26  652  19  log
*** target
cim  1.32  2044  23  log
*** c combinator evaluator 1.48 (GRAPH/NO_DICK)
parrot  2.53  8036  35  log
pike  2.61  3620  9  log
lua5  2.71  840  11  log
lua  3.81  1000  11  log
*** c combinator evaluator 3.80 (GRAPH/BOEHM)
mawk  3.99  1912  10  log
slang  5.51  2296  15  log
*** c combinator evaluator 6.25 (DAG)
guile  8.52  2784  9  log
icon  9.37  1280  13  log
awka  10.34  17396  10  log
ici  10.78  2264  7  log
cygperl  13.85  37080  11  log
*** c ast evaluator 13.97
python  14.74  3544  12  log
perl  50.15  36100  11  log
*** ml intermediate lambda evaluator 120.29
rexx  78.82  5896  14  log
*** ml ast evaluator 457.9
gawk  T  T  10  log
php  T  T  10  log
elastic  F  F  17  log
jscript  F  F  14  log
rebol  F  F  12  log
ruby  F  F  11  log
tcl  F  F  15  log
vbscript  F  F  15  log

ML ast is an evaluator directly on the ast, ml lambda is a lambda evaluator on a compiled ast. The C ast evaluator is an evaluator on the ast, the C dag evaluator is a evaluator on a dag rewriter of inverted lambda terms, the C graph evaluator is a graph rewrite system with destructive updates - Boehm is with the Boehm-Demers-Weiser garbage collector, no-dick is with a Cheney style garbage collector, graph-fake is with some small inlining of definitions.

Note that there is a factor 120 between the ml compiled version and the C runtime.