[Chicken-users] [ANN] Numbers 4.0 released

[Peter Bex]

Hello CHICKEN users,

I would like to announce the fourth and (hopefully) final major release
of the numbers egg.  This version features a change in the representation
to use the full machine word.  Previous versions were based on the
Scheme48 representation, which left 2 bits unused.  This change allows
for a pretty major performance improvement, especially on big endian
architectures.

Furthermore, the number->string and string->number conversions have
been improved to be several orders of magnitude faster than numbers 3.1,
especially for hexadecimal conversion.  Division has been sped up by
the use of an algorithm by Burnikel & Ziegler, the square root operation
has been sped up by the use of a Karatsuba-like algorithm by Zimmermann.

This new version of the numbers egg finally brings us up to a competitive
level when compared with other major Scheme implementations.  Especially
for small to medium bignums, we're close to Gambit and Racket in many
situations.  For astronomically large numbers, FFT-based multiplication
is still missing; this would be required if we want to compete with Gambit
and GMP-based Schemes in this area.

Finally, the last of the Scheme48 code has been dropped, which improves
the licensing situation a little when this work will finally get imported
into CHICKEN core.  This could be quite an effort, so it will probably
take a while before this becomes available.

Cheers,
Peter

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