Smalltalk cannot beat gmp, but the comparison is not fair, anything
can beat current implementation of factorial...
See http://smallissimo.blogspot.fr/2011/07/evaluating-factorial-from-its-prime.html
and some following posts which has a few links on how to compute it
efficiently.

Nicolas

2012/5/13 Lawson English <lenglish5 at cox.net>:
> On 5/13/12 11:02 AM, Lawson English wrote:
>
> [results]
>
> Ack, I printed the times for the gmplib off by a factor of 10. However, the
> ratio is still correct.
>
> gmplib is at least 700x faster than the built-in factorial method for 100000
> factorial.
>
>
> --
> Squeak from the very start (introduction to Squeak and Pharo Smalltalk for
> the (almost) complete and compleate beginner).
> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6601A198DF14788D&feature=view_all
>
>