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 Nim 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
nim 2.nim 1224ms 7.0ms 35.9MB 1200ms 7ms nim 2.2.4
nim 2.nim 1502ms 17ms 35.0MB 1483ms 3ms nim/clang 2.2.4
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
nim 2.nim 117ms 20ms 7.3MB 95ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
nim 2.nim 124ms 5.3ms 5.9MB 110ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
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
nim 2.nim 252ms 0.3ms 1.4MB 240ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 2.nim 252ms 8.0ms 2.0MB 233ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 606ms 6.1ms 1.3MB 500ms 90ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 644ms 18ms 2.1MB 523ms 107ms nim 2.2.4
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
nim 2.nim 29ms 2.1ms 1.4MB 20ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 2.nim 31ms 3.8ms 2.1MB 23ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 66ms 1.5ms 2.1MB 50ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 76ms 15ms 1.3MB 57ms 7ms nim/clang 2.2.4
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
nim 1.nim 1.5ms 0.1ms 1.3MB 0ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 2.5ms 0.5ms 2.1MB 0ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
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
nim 2.nim 494ms 1.4ms 2.1MB 480ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
nim 2.nim 542ms 9.6ms 1.4MB 530ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
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
nim 2.nim 55ms 2.9ms 2.1MB 47ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
nim 2.nim 58ms 1.0ms 1.3MB 50ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
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
nim 1.nim 11029ms 35ms 1.3MB 11017ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 11039ms 7.6ms 3.4MB 11027ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
perl 4-m.pl 126524ms 1315ms 13.2MB 496153ms 227ms perl 5.38.2

Input: 4000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
nim 1.nim 2764ms 2.5ms 1.4MB 2753ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 2767ms 4.2ms 2.1MB 2753ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
perl 4-m.pl 31168ms 843ms 11.7MB 121797ms 47ms perl 5.38.2

Input: 2000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
nim 1.nim 695ms 0.3ms 1.3MB 683ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 696ms 2.1ms 2.1MB 687ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
perl 4-m.pl 7425ms 112ms 9.9MB 28747ms 17ms perl 5.38.2