Programming Language and compiler
Benchmarks

Results for 38 of 40 languages from this run on actest1.

Unavailable in this run: Hack, Lisp. Follow the run link for failure details.

Perl VS Lua benchmarks

Current benchmark data was generated on Sun Sep 27 2026, full log can be found HERE

CONTRIBUTIONS are WELCOME!

[x86_64][4 cores] Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3687U CPU @ 2.10GHz (Model 58)

* -m in a file name stands for multi-threading or multi-processing

* -i in a file name stands for direct intrinsics usage. (Usage of simd intrinsics via libraries is not counted)

* -ffi in a file name stands for non-stdlib FFI usage

* (You may find time < time(user) + time(sys) for some non-parallelized programs, the overhead is from GC or JIT compiler, which are allowed to take advantage of multi-cores as that's more close to real-world scenarios.)

binarytrees

Input: 18

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 6633ms 183ms 291.4MB 6527ms 87ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 1.lua 16420ms 378ms 152.3MB 16370ms 30ms lua 5.4.6
perl 1.pl 28055ms 391ms 77.2MB 28003ms 33ms perl 5.38.2

Input: 15

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 578ms 29ms 24.9MB 553ms 3ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 1.lua 1185ms 23ms 17.5MB 1173ms 0ms lua 5.4.6
perl 1.pl 2485ms 46ms 13.8MB 2467ms 3ms perl 5.38.2

fasta

Input: 2500000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
perl 1.pl 6630ms 80ms 10.6MB 6613ms 0ms perl 5.38.2

Input: 250000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
perl 1.pl 657ms 22ms 6.3MB 643ms 0ms perl 5.38.2

helloworld

Input: QwQ

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 1.6ms 0.3ms 2.4MB 0ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 1.lua 2.2ms 0.4ms 1.8MB 0ms 0ms lua 5.4.6
perl 1.pl 2.8ms 0.7ms 3.8MB 0ms 0ms perl 5.38.2

nbody

Input: 5000000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 4.lua 1312ms 8.1ms 1.6MB 1303ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 4.lua 19839ms 364ms 1.8MB 19823ms 0ms lua 5.4.6
perl 2.pl 42316ms 505ms 5.8MB 42303ms 0ms perl 5.38.2

Input: 500000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 4.lua 139ms 4.9ms 1.5MB 127ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
lua 4.lua 1941ms 5.9ms 1.8MB 1927ms 0ms lua 5.4.6
perl 2.pl 4206ms 31ms 5.8MB 4193ms 0ms perl 5.38.2

spectral-norm

Input: 8000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 11058ms 4.0ms 2.6MB 11047ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
perl 4-m.pl 126524ms 1315ms 13.2MB 496153ms 227ms perl 5.38.2
lua 1.lua 167091ms 2385ms 2.9MB 167067ms 3ms lua 5.4.6

Input: 4000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 2774ms 9.6ms 2.7MB 2760ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
perl 4-m.pl 31168ms 843ms 11.7MB 121797ms 47ms perl 5.38.2
lua 1.lua 41466ms 392ms 2.6MB 41447ms 0ms lua 5.4.6

Input: 2000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 698ms 2.1ms 1.5MB 687ms 0ms luajit 2.1.1703358377
perl 4-m.pl 7425ms 112ms 9.9MB 28747ms 17ms perl 5.38.2
lua 1.lua 10267ms 17ms 1.7MB 10257ms 0ms lua 5.4.6