Description of Benchmarks

geometricMean

Gabriel Benchmarks

browse

Browsing a data base, a Gabriel benchmark, 10 thousand iterations. [May be a test of string->symbol and/or symbol->string.]

deriv

Symbolic differentiation, a Gabriel benchmark, one hundred million iterations.

dderiv

This is a table-driven version of the deriv benchmark using hashtables and association lists instead of the original benchmark's property lists.

destruc

Destructive list operations, a Gabriel benchmark, 20 thousand iterations of a 600x50 problem.

diviter

Divides 1000 by 2 using lists as a unary notation for integers, a Gabriel benchmark, 5 million iterations. This benchmark tests null?, cons, car, cdr, and little else.

divrec

This benchmark is the same as diviter except it uses deep recursion instead of iteration.

puzzle

Combinatorial search of a state space, a Gabriel benchmark, 5000 iterations. A test of arrays and classical compiler optimizations. This benchmark was originally written in Pascal by Forrest Baskett.

triangl

Another combinatorial search similar to puzzle, a Gabriel benchmark, 250 iterations.

tak

A triply recursive integer function related to the Takeuchi function, a Gabriel benchmark. 1 iteration of (tak 42 20 11). A test of non-tail calls and arithmetic. [Historical note: The Symbolics 3600 performed 1 iteration of (tak 18 12 6) in 0.43 seconds using generic arithmetic. On our MacBook Air, Larceny runs that benchmark in 0.000096 seconds. That's over 4000 times as fast.]

takl

Calculates (tak 42 20 11) using the same recursive algorithm as for the tak:42:20:11 benchmark but using lists to represent integers. This too was a Gabriel benchmark (with different arguments). 1 iteration.

ntakl

The takl benchmark contains a peculiar boolean expression. Rewriting that expression into a more readable idiom allows some compilers to generate better code for it.

cpstak

The tak:42:20:11 benchmark in continuation-passing style, 1 iteration. A test of closure creation.

ctak

The tak:32:16:8 benchmark in continuation-capturing style, 5 iterations. A test of call-with-current-continuation.

Numerical Benchmarks

fib

Doubly recursive computation of the 40th fibonacci number (102334155), using (< n 2) to terminate the recursion; 10 iterations.

fibc

A version of fib that uses first class continuations; written by Kent Dybvig. Calculates the 40th Fibonacci number (102334155) only once.

fibfp

Calculation of the 40th Fibonacci number using inexact numbers; 10 iterations. A test of floating point arithmetic. Uses essentially the same code as the fib benchmark.

sum

Sums the integers from 0 to 1000, 5 million iterations. (Performs the same number of additions as the sumfp benchmark described below, but avoids the bignum arithmetic that would be needed on some systems by performing a thousand times as many iterations of a problem that's a thousand times as small.)

sumfp

Sums the integers from 0 to 1e6, 5 thousand iterations. A test of floating point arithmetic. Uses essentially the same code as the sum benchmark.

fft

Fast Fourier Transform on 65536 real-valued points, 1000 iterations. A test of floating point arithmetic.

mbrot

Generation of a Mandelbrot set, 25 iterations on a problem of size 1000. A test of floating point arithmetic on reals.

mbrotZ

Same as the mbrot benchmark, but using complex instead of real arithmetic.

nucleic

Determination of a nucleic acid's spatial structure, 200 iterations. A test of floating point arithmetic, and a real program.

pnpoly

Testing to see whether a point is contained within a 2-dimensional polygon, 2 million iterations (with 12 tests per iteration). A test of floating point arithmetic.

Kernighan and Van Wyk Benchmarks

ack

A version of the Ackermann function, with arguments 3,13. Just one iteration.

array1

This benchmark allocates, initializes, and copies some fairly large one-dimensional arrays. 1 thousand iterations on a problem size of one million.

string

This tests string-append and substring, and very little else. 5 hundred iterations on a problem size of 500000.

sum1

This benchmark reads and sums 100,000 floating point numbers 100 times. It is primarily a test of floating point input.

cat

This file-copying benchmark is a simple test of character i/o. It copies the King James Bible 100 times.

cat2

Same as cat except it uses UTF-8 transcoding instead of Latin-1.

cat3

Same as cat except it uses UTF-16 transcoding instead of Latin-1.

tail

This benchmark performs considerable character i/o. It prints the King James Bible verse by verse, in reverse order of the verses, 100 times.

wc

Another character i/o benchmark. It counts the number of words in the King James Bible 250 times.

More Input/Output Benchmarks

read0

This synthetic benchmark tests the read procedure on all 1-character inputs and on all 2-character inputs that begin with #\a. Since most such inputs are illegal, this is largely a test of R6RS exception handling.

read1

Reads nboyer.sch 10 thousand times.

read2

Reads nboyer.sch 10 thousand times using UTF-8 transcoding.

read3

Reads nboyer.sch 10 thousand times using UTF-16 transcoding.

Other Benchmarks

bibfreq

Uses eq? hashtables to find the words that occur most frequently in the King James Bible.

bibfreq2

Uses symbol-hash hashtables to find the words that occur most frequently in the King James Bible.

compiler

A compiler kernel that looks as though it was written by Marc Feeley. 10 thousand iterations on a 47-line input.

conform

A type checker written by Jim Miller, 1000 iterations.

dynamic

Dynamic type inference, self-applied, 1000 iterations. Written by Fritz Henglein. A real program.

earley

Earley's parsing algorithm, parsing a 15-symbol input according to one of the simplest ambiguous grammars, 3 iterations. A real program, applied to toy data whose exponential behavior leads to a peak heap size of half a gigabyte or more.

graphs

This program was provided by Andrew Wright, but we don't know much about it, and would appreciate more information. This higher order program creates closures almost as often as it performs non-tail procedure calls. Ten iterations on a problem of size 7.

lattice

Another program that was provided by Andrew Wright, though it may have been written by Jim Miller. It enumerates the order-preserving maps between finite lattices. 25 iterations.

matrix

Another program that was provided by Andrew Wright. Computes maximal matrices; similar to some puzzle programs. 10 thousand iterations on a problem of size 5.

maze

Constructs a maze on a 20x7 hexagonal grid, 100 thousand iterations. Written by Olin Shivers.

mazefun

Constructs a maze on an 11x11 rectangular grid using purely functional style, 50 thousand iterations. Written by Marc Feeley.

nqueens

Computes the number of solutions to the 13-queens problem, 10 times.

paraffins

Computes the number of paraffins that have 24 carbon atoms, 10 times.

parsing

Parses the nboyer benchmark 10 thousand times using a scanner and parser generated using Will Clinger's LexGen and ParseGen, which are the tools used to create Larceny's read procedure.

peval

Partial evaluation of Scheme code, 10 thousand iterations. Written by Marc Feeley.

pi

A bignum-intensive benchmark that calculates digits of pi.

primes

Computes the primes less than 10000 using a list-based Sieve of Eratosthenes. One thousand iterations. Written by Eric Mohr.

quicksort

This is a quicksort benchmark. (That isn't as obvious as it sounds. The original quicksort benchmark distributed with Gambit was a bignum benchmark, not a quicksort benchmark. See the comments in the code.) Sorts a vector of 10000 random integers 5 thousand times. Written by Lars Hansen, and restored to its original glory by Will Clinger.

ray

Ray tracing a simple scene, 250 iterations. A test of floating point arithmetic. This program is translated from the Common Lisp code in Example 9.8 of Paul Graham's book on ANSI Common Lisp.

scheme

A Scheme interpreter evaluating a merge sort of 30 strings, 300 thousand iterations. Written by Marc Feeley.

simplex

Simplex algorithm, 5 million iterations. A test of floating point arithmetic, and a real program.

slatex

Scheme to LaTeX processor, 500 iterations. A test of file i/o and probably much else. Part of a real program written by Dorai Sitaram.

Garbage Collection Benchmarks

nboyer

An updated and exponentially scalable version of the boyer benchmark. The nboyer benchmark's data structures are considerably more appropriate than the data structures used in the original boyer benchmarks. These timings are for 1 iteration on a problem of size 6. A test of lists, vectors, and garbage collection.

sboyer

A version of nboyer that has been tuned (by Henry Baker) to reduce storage allocation, making it less of a garbage collection benchmark and more of a compiler benchmark. Only 4 lines of code were changed, and another 7 lines of code were added. These timings are for 1 iteration on a problem of size 6.

gcbench

This program was written to mimic the phase structure that has been conjectured for a class of application programs for which garbage collection may represent a significant fraction of the execution time. This benchmark warms up by allocating and then dropping a large binary tree. Then it allocates a large permanent tree and a permanent array of floating point numbers. Then it allocates considerable tree storage in seven phases, increasing the tree size in each phase but keeping the total storage allocation approximately the same for each phase. Each phase is divided into two subphases. The first subphase allocates trees top-down using side effects, while the second subphase allocates trees bottom-up without using side effects. This benchmark was written in Java by John Ellis and Pete Kovac, modified by Hans Boehm, and translated into Scheme, Standard ML, C++, and C by William Clinger; it has had way too much influence on implementors of production garbage collectors. The timings shown are for 1 iteration on problem size 20.

mperm

The mperm30:10:4:1 benchmark is a severe test of storage allocation and garbage collection. At the end of each of the 30 iterations, the oldest quarter of the live storage becomes garbage. This benchmark is particularly difficult for generational garbage collectors, since it violates their assumption that young objects have a shorter future life expectancy than older objects. The perm9 benchmark that was once (and might still be) distributed with Gambit does not have that property.

gcold

A synthetic garbage collection benchmark written by David Detlefs and translated to Scheme by Will Clinger and Lars Hansen.

Synthetic Benchmarks for R6RS

equal

This benchmark tests the R7RS equal? predicate on some fairly large structures of various shapes, including circular structures.

normalization

This benchmark runs all of the Unicode 5.0.0 tests of string normalization.

bv2string

This benchmark tests conversions between bytevectors and Unicode.

listsort

This benchmark tests the list-sort procedure. Otherwise it is the same as the vecsort benchmark.

vecsort

This benchmark tests the vector-sort procedure. Otherwise it is the same as the listsort benchmark.

hashtable0

This is a synthetic benchmark designed to stress hashtables.