Re: [Chicken-hackers] [PATCH] Re: make check failing

[Felix]

> 
> Well, there is is something to be said, in a fast compiler, for all
> arithmetic running in constant time.  That's what Stalin provides, FWIW.
> On the other hand, the other systems that provide fixnum-flonum support
> only are slow interpreters: RScheme, VX, Inlab, and Sizzle.  (There are
> also a bunch of interpreters with wrapping-fixnum and flonum support,
> namely Shoe, TinyScheme, BDC, XLisp, Schemik, SXM, and Elisp, but wrapping
> fixnums aren't conformant.)  Gambit provides the full numeric tower,
> and Ghu knows it is fast.

Gambit is fast when using type-specific unboxed and unsafe arithmetic,
not necessarily when using bignum arithmetic. The implementation of
the latter is likely to be top-notch, but Scheme code only runs fast
when it has been effectively reduced to C code...


cheers,
felix