Re: Benchmark for Ruby

On Sat, 16 Sep 2006, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

Hugh Sasse wrote:

<OT>I've tried, but FORTH still hasn't clicked with me yet...</OT>

<not-quite-OT>
[...]
</not-quite-OT>

Thanks, I'll reply off list about that.

There exists at least this effort to use Genetic Algorithms for
tuning compiler options. I've not explored it yet.

http://www.coyotegulch.com/products/acovea/index.html

One may need a cluster of machines (of many platforms?) to do this
usefully, but still. Maybe Rinda can help us all contribute...

I think I installed acovea once -- it's part of Gentoo -- but I don't
remember doing anything with it. But the concept is certainly
intriguing, and might be more so to the folks on this list who are
always talking about how machine cycles are cheaper than programmer
cycles. Of course, if the programmer has to spend his or her cycles
waiting for a genetic algorithm to converge ...

:)

GA's aren't that quick, and would not be for a ruby build. But it's
something to explore, just because it might teach us something.

I've had bad experiences in the past with this sort of optimization.
"Real" compiler optimization is a hard problem in the complexity sense,
plus there's all the time you have to spend correctness-testing the

Well, at least we have a set of tests for ruby, and we can use that
as part of the fitness function.

optimized versions. My experience has been it's far better to pluck the
low-hanging fruit, which is what gcc does by itself, and which is what
the designers of virtual machines do.

People have stated that implementation method despatch in ruby are naive.

http://smallthought.com/avi/?p=16

that creating Procs, and continuations are slow:

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1470

and other people have mentioned the garbage collection system.

I'm certainly not in a position to suggest what might be done about
these things, or to denigrate the implementations as they stand, but
these are about the only specific things I can find people pointing
to, (other than the general remarks about ruby being slow, which add
more heat than light). So I think we have some juicy pieces of fruit
to bite into here, but I don't think they are low hanging, not for
me anyway. :-)

Hugh

.

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