Guile speed versus qscheme, mzscheme

[Doug Evans]

Hi.

I happened on this message from awhile ago,
and got curious about the current speed of Guile.

http://sourceware.org/ml/guile/2000-08/msg00187.html

I got a copy of qscheme, hacked it so that it would compile with
current gcc, and ran the benchmark again.
OOC, I also tested with mzscheme.

Here is what I got.
No claim is made that this is a useful benchmark per se.
I only use it here as it's what was used in the email above.

system: i386-linux, fc10 (fedora core 10)

bench-1.scm:

(define (foo n p)
  (cond ((zero? n) p)
        ((null? p) (foo (- n 1) (cons p p)))
        (else (foo (- n 1) (car p)))))
(display "Starting.\n")
(foo 10000000 '())
(display "Done.\n")

---

mzscheme (v4.1.2):

bash$ time mzscheme -e '(load "bench-1.scm")'
Starting.
Done.

real    0m0.897s
user    0m0.818s
sys     0m0.074s

---

qscheme (0.5.1 + hacks):

bash$ time qscheme bench-1.scm
scm_vm3_engine_init:
scm_vm3_engine_init: stack init
scm_vm3_engine_init: regs init
scm_vm3_engine_init: setup of call table
; trying to load /misc/dje/gnu/qscheme/rel/share/qscheme/0.5.1/s.scm
; trying to load /misc/dje/gnu/qscheme/rel/share/qscheme/0.5.1/macro.scm
Starting.
Done.

real    0m2.329s
user    0m2.274s
sys     0m0.006s

---

guile (1.8.5):

bash$ time guile bench-1.scm
Starting.
Done.

real    0m8.452s
user    0m8.267s
sys     0m0.049s

---

guile (1.6.8):

bash$ time guile-1.6.8 -s bench-1.scm 
Starting.
Done.

real    0m6.865s
user    0m6.821s
sys     0m0.020s

---
All runs were repeated a few times to ensure these are representative.

I built guile-1.6.8 myself whereas guile 1.8.5 is what's currently
on my machine from the fedora repository.  [Was there some change
in 1.8 that slowed it down, or is the version that's in fedora
suboptimal?]
At any rate, it seems Guile still has a ways to go speed-wise.
I could have messed up somewhere of course.
Any and all comments appreciated.
Are there any plans on the horizon to improve things?
Did the vm improvements mentioned in the above email not make it into Guile?