Team PLClub ICFP entry -- comparing the performance of OCAML and SML

[Dave MacQueen]

Another relevant point is the SML/NJ doesn't at present use hardware
sqrt, which may cause a nontrivial penalty.  We'll add hardware sqrt
for architectures that support it in 110.30.

Dave

> From:  "John H. Reppy" <jhr@research.bell-labs.com>
> To:    MLton@sourcelight.com
> Cc:    sml-list@cs.cmu.edu, sml-nj@research.bell-labs.com
> Date:  Thu, 12 Oct 2000 17:05:30 EDT
> Subject: Re: Team PLClub ICFP entry -- comparing the performance of OCAML and
     >  SML 

> 
> I've done a quick de-camlification of this program, which seems to improve
> its performance under SML/NJ by a factor of 2 or more on the chess.gml
> example (733MHz PIII; SML/NJ 110.29).  My changes were:
> 
>   1) use Unsafe.Array.{sub,update} where CAML is using unsafe array
>      operations.
> 
>   2) replace curried arguments by tuples.
> 
>   3) replace the inner loop and reference cell in the matrix multiplication
>      by a tail-recursive function and function parameter.
> 
> I think that this example illustrates the danger of making casual
> performance comparisons.  There are clearly stylistic differences
> in the most efficient style of SML programming vs the most efficient
> style of CAML programming.
> 
> The CAML version of this program is still faster than the SML/NJ version,
> but the difference is 30% (instead of a factor of 3).  I suspect that
> there are other changes to the coding style that could be made to improve
> the performance under SML (for example, I'd use a record to represent the
> transformation matrix, instead of an array).
> 
> W.r.t. the revised numbers below, the numbers for SML/NJ 110.25 on fractal
> and large look suspect.
> 
> 	- John
> 
>      
> In message <14822.6721.428985.597681@eponym.epr.com>, "Stephen Weeks" writ
> es:
> >
> > 
> > At the request of several SML/NJ developers, I reran the benchmarks with so
> me
> > newer versions of SML/NJ: 110.25 and 110.29.  Here are the results.
> > 
> > 			    110.9.1 110.25  110.29
> >               OCAML  MLton  SML/NJ  SML/NJ  SML/NJ
> > holes           1.8    3.5     6.4     4.7     5.0
> > fov             1.5    2.1     6.1     4.8     4.4
> > intercyl        1.6    2.4     8.9     6.5     6.0
> > snowgoon        2.9    4.0    13.2     8.6     8.4
> > dice            3.9    5.7    15.5    11.3    10.8
> > golf            1.5    2.5     5.8     4.3     4.2
> > cone-fractal    3.7    4.9    13.0     9.0     8.4
> > large           4.3    3.1     3.9     3.9     7.6
> > pipe            5.4    5.3    17.9    13.2    11.3
> > chess          16.0   17.8    60.4    40.4    38.6
> > fractal        12.2    8.7    40.6    26.9    41.1
> > 
> > geom-mean       3.6    4.4    12.2     9.0     9.5