[Vm-dev] Re: [squeak-dev] Squeak vs Python "smack down"

[stephane ducasse]

This is really interesting to see that type inferencing can really help.
This is definitively a topic I would like to explore in the coming years. 

Stef


> Hi folks!
> 
> Since we are on the verge of 4.2, and we have a brand new Cog VM to play with I felt like dusting off my old Pystone port to Squeak - Sqystone, which I wrote back in 2004.
> 
> At that time Squeak was around 5 times faster than CPython. How do we stack up today? Yeah, I know - hardly a good benchmark, they all lie etc etc. :)
> 
> I am using Ubuntu 10.10 on a corei7, so this is running on a 64 bit CPU.
> 
> 
> Cog!
> ====
> Squeak 4.2-10966 (soon to be released) + latest Cog r2361 (binary download):
> Pystone(1.1) time for 50000 passes = 0.06
> This machine benchmarks at 833333.3 pystones/second
> 
> NOTE: AFAICT running with more passes does not improve it. Also, not sure if I could get more out of this if I built from source on my box.
> 
> 
> Regular Squeak
> ==============
> Squeak 4.2-10966 (soon to be released) + regular Squeak VM 4.4.7-2357 (built from src):
> Pystone(1.1) time for 50000 passes = 0.503
> This machine benchmarks at 99403.6 pystones/second
> 
> 
> Regular CPython
> ===============
> CPython 3.1.2 (newest in Ubuntu Meerkat, minimal):
> gokr at quigon:/usr/lib/python3.1/test$ python3.1 pystone.py
> Pystone(1.1) time for 50000 passes = 0.57
> This machine benchmarks at 87719.3 pystones/second
> 
> NOTE: 3.2 is reportedly a teeny bit faster. Also not built from source.
> 
> 
> Pypy 1.4
> ========
> wget http://pypy.org/download/pypy-1.4.1-linux64.tar.bz2
> gokr at quigon:~/python/pypy-1.4.1-linux64$ ./bin/pypy ./lib-python/2.5.2/test/pystone.py
> Pystone(1.1) time for 50000 passes = 0.15
> This machine benchmarks at 333333 pystones/second
> gokr at quigon:~/python/pypy-1.4.1-linux64$ ./bin/pypy ./lib-python/2.5.2/test/pystone.py 5000000
> Pystone(1.1) time for 5000000 passes = 4.8
> This machine benchmarks at 1.04167e+06 pystones/second
> 
> NOTE: Also not built from source. Here we run pystone a second time with 100x more loops and get a substantially better number.
> 
> 
> Shedskin 0.7
> ============
> sudo apt-get install g++ libpcre3-dev libgc-dev python-dev
> sudo dpkg -i shedskin_0.7_all.deb
> wget http://shedskin.googlecode.com/files/shedskin-examples-0.7.tgz
> shedskin pystone.py
> gokr at quigon:~/python/shedskin-examples-0.7$ make
> g++  -O2 -march=native -fomit-frame-pointer -Wno-deprecated  -I. -I/usr/share/shedskin/lib /usr/share/shedskin/lib/builtin.cpp pystone.cpp /usr/share/shedskin/lib/time.cpp /usr/share/shedskin/lib/re.cpp -lgc -lpcre  -o pystone
> gokr at quigon:~/python/gokr at quigon:~/python/shedskin-examples-0.7$ ls -la pystone*
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 gokr gokr 297329 2011-02-07 23:01 pystone
> -rw-r--r-- 1 gokr gokr   9193 2011-02-07 23:00 pystone.cpp
> -rw-r--r-- 1 gokr gokr   1893 2011-02-07 23:00 pystone.hpp
> -rw-r--r-- 1 gokr gokr   5774 2010-12-11 11:40 pystone.py
> gokr at quigon:~/python/shedskin-examples-0.7$ ./pystone
> This machine benchmarks at 2500000.000000 pystones/second
> 
> NOTE: I am wondering a bit about this. It tells the same whatever loops I give it... But ok, perhaps it is all fine.
> 
> 
> Summary
> =======
> 
> - The regular Squeak VM has not been overrun by CPython in these 6 years time. When I wrote Sqystone Squeak was 5x faster IIRC (can't find the post anymore). Now they are equal more or less, Squeak still a teeny bit faster.
> 
> - Cog is brutally fast on this one. Compared to CPython and regular Squeak almost 10x faster.
> 
> - Pypy is about 20% faster than Cog if given enough time to actually start jitting. Cool for the Pypy project! And cool that they aren't that much faster than Cog. :)
> 
> - Shedskin is the "state of the art" of statically compiling Python via C++ using type inferencing etc etc - so I hear. It is said to be faster than Cython and Psyco. It ends up beating Cog, but "only" by a factor of 3x. I say "only" because that seems pretty good to me given that Cog is a JIT and still pretty young and that Shedskin can only run a subset of Python.
> 
> 
> regards, Göran
>