[armedbear-devel] Performance of ABCL?

[Mark Evenson]

On 9/24/09 2:11 PM, Žiga Lenarčič wrote:

> I've tested Maxima with ABCL. While it runs, which is rather cool,
> it's fairly slow!
[…]

> My question is, is performance ever increase dramatically (perhaps
> with java 7?) or is ABCL inherently slower because of the JVM?
> Clojure performs better than ABCL usually and is also running on JVM.

But Clojure cannot run Maxima now can it?

> I don't know about KAWA. Is JVM bytecode not flexible enough to
> perhaps reuse some compilation techniques of native compilers (CCL,
> SBCL) ?

Since the JVM has 8-bit opcodes and is stack based there are certainly 
less options to write bytecode than a modern, register-based processor. 
  But don't forget that the bytecode itself gets transformed by the JVM 
to native code, so there is actually quite a bit of compilation going on 
"after" we compile to bytecode.

We (mainly Erik?) have used Maxima as a test for understanding how to 
improve ABCL performance and compliance.  At this point we're happy that 
you are wondering about speed rather than if ABCL can run Maxima.  We 
continue to work on optimization but as a part-time volunteer effort 
progress is uneven.

-- 
"A screaming comes across the sky.  It has happened before, but there
is nothing to compare to it now."