From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2006-08-02T22:43:51+09:00
Subject: Re: For performance, write it in C - Part 3, Source code now available

Christian Neukirchen wrote:
>>> ... Which is extremely funny, since Common Lisp have had wicked fast
>>> virtual machines for the last 15 years (on par with C in performance).
>>>
>>> They should catch up with the 20th century first of all. =)
>>>       
>
> Sorry, but which CL has a "wicked fast" *virtual machine* and is on
> par with C?  AFAICS, they either are one or the other...
>   
I don't recall which of the "big four" open source CLs have virtual 
machines, if any. IIRC the "standard Lisp benchmarks" are pretty much a 
dead heat on GCL vs. CMUCL, with Clisp coming in third. When SBCL "grows 
up", it will probably be as fast as GCL or CMUCL. My recollection is 
that the CMUCL *compiler* is on a par with C in terms of generating x86 
machine code.

"scheme48" has a virtual machine, IIRC, and it's regarded highly by the 
folks who did the "vmgen" and "gforth" virtual machines, which are bred 
for speed using some non-ANSI features of GCC. But that's not Common 
Lisp; Scheme is in some ways easier to make "wicked fast".