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FAQ: Speed

Roughly speaking, how fast is Squeak?

Here are some benchmarks. Note that enchmark numbers for Squeak on some platforms can be different depending on whether the VM preference "Reduce CPU usage" is enabled or disabled

Windows NT4, SP5

[Note: standard Squeak benchmarks were adjusted to run for several seconds total: "28 benchFib" became "32 benchFib" and "1 benchmark" became "200 benchmark" in #tinyBenchmarks; I'm seeing rather inconsistent and unreasonable values of bytecodes/sec when I use the shorter running standard values]
Dwight Hughes

Göran Hultgren I can top that...
[Paolo Bonzini notes: well, if you multiply the result by 3/5, thus "normalizing" it to 300 MHz, you get roughly the same numbers as above. This page is not about "Look, I have this stunning $100,000 machine, Squeak running on it is faster than VW on a 486!"; it is about "how fast is Squeak on different architectures and comparable clocks" and about "How fast is it on a reference machine, in comparison to other interpreters". Results for PII/400MHz and Athlon/500MHz are completely useless IMHO]

Göran Hultgren I was only kidding, I agree with you fully. But it is also interesting to see how well different hardware performs, especially if you are wondering how much faster an Athlon really is. :-)


300MHz K6-2 under Linux, Squeak 2.7 VM/image

This is a little slower than the 300Mhz PII/WinNT listed above. Not sure if it's due to AMD vs Intel or the Windows vs. Unix VM.
Lex Spoon


Windows 2000


Celeron/300MHz - Squeak 2.8 ChangeSet 2299 newest VM [6 Jun 2000] (Andreas Kuckartz)

Mac G3


292 MHz G3, Squeak 2.5 VM (as of Aug 31, 1999):
John Maloney

500 MHz G3, Squeak 2.9alpha VM (as of Aug 7, 2000):
RandalSchwartz

StrongARM


275MHz StrongARM in Corel NetWinder
Tim Rowledge

Sparc


25MHz SPARCstation IPX, Squeak 2.6 :-)
Hans-Martin Mosner - no, Morphic isn't exciting on that machine...

IRIX


SGI O2 MIPS R5000 200 MHZ IP32 Processor Squeak 2.5
Obviously, someone should update the IRIX VM



Speeds of other Smalltalks

For comparison I also ran the same adjusted benchmarks on some other Smalltalks, all on WinNT4Wsp5.

Dolphin Smalltalk Version 2.1: a modestly optimized bytecode interpreter VM (non-translating).

VisualWorks 3.0 NonCommercial -- translating VM, therefore no bytecodes are actually being run, but the performance ratio should be reasonably valid.

Smalltalk MT VC 1.5 Evaluation Version -- a fully compiled Smalltalk. AFAIK there is no dynamic translation being done (and certainly no bytecodes being run). Yes, those numbers are correct - whether they are also meaningful or not is another matter.

Dwight Hughes

GNU Smalltalk Version 1.7.4 -- pretty optimized but non-translating bytecode interpreter VM


and version 1.95, which has a stab at a translator to native code.


Paolo Bonzini