macrakis@harvard.ARPA (Stavros Macrakis) (03/12/85)
Out of an excess of curiosity, I went back and checked DEC Fortran vs. Maclisp code quality on the inner product problem: DEC Fortran turns out to produce excellent code, and Maclisp gets nowhere near the performance it could get under its runtime model. DEC Fortran has 7 memory reference loop; Maclisp (with full declarations), a 23 mem ref loop. Of course, this proves nothing about Lisp per se, just the Maclisp compiler of 3/85.
hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) (03/13/85)
> Out of an excess of curiosity, I went back and checked DEC Fortran vs. > Maclisp code quality I conjecture that the original test may have been against the old DEC Fortran compiler, known as F40. If so, your new test was against a different Fortran compiler. Hence different results would not be surprising. Does anybody who was involved in the tests know what Fortran compiler was involved? This particular piece of folklore (that Maclisp generates as good code as Fortran) is more widely quoted than you might think. If it isn't true, or if the Fortran compiler is one that would now be viewed as substandard, I would very much like to know.