From: sross <rosssd@...>
Date: 2006-08-03T06:15:11+09:00
Subject: Re: For performance, write it in C - Part 3, Source code now available

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> 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.

Actually SBCL is a fork from CMUCL (with a focus on maintanability) and
as such uses the same compiler.
Compiler improvements are often ported between the two implementations
and when it comes to actual performance there is not much between
the two.