Re: [Chicken-users] Chicken benchmarks

[Sven Hartrumpf]

On 18 Sep 2002 10:33:10 -0400, "Perry E. Metzger" <address@hidden> wrote: 
> Felix <address@hidden> writes:
> > I think it is probably more rewarding is a decent, free
> > R5RS compiler targeting x86 machine code, with an open design
> > that can incorporate experimental extensions easily.
> 
> That's probably a reasonable idea, although I'd try to do a real
> retargetable back end design -- there is more to the world than just
> x86, although x86 is an obvious first target.

GNU lightning might be a compromise between Felix' and Peter's view.

http://www.gnu.org/software/lightning/ :
"...
GNU lightning is a library that generates assembly language code at
run-time; it is very fast, making it ideal for Just-In-Time
compilers, and it abstracts over the target CPU, as it exposes to the
clients a standardized RISC instruction set inspired by the MIPS and
SPARC chips. ...

GNU lightning 1.0 has been released and is usable in complex code
generation tasks. The available backends cover the x86, SPARC and
PowerPC architectures; the floating point interface is still
experimental though, and developed for the x86 only."

The Just-In-Time feature even allows partial evaluation at runtime
for "Lightning Chicken"
(if chicken itself allowed partial evaluation at runtime :-)
Of yourse, this would be very demanding and one would be happy to
get partial evaluation working for expressions that are annotated
by the Scheme coder to be possible candidates.

Ciao
Sven