Re: Shrinking the C core

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   And even this is not a definitive answer. I do not think that we can
   point out a single reason why SBCL is faster. I am not even sure if SBCL
   is _always_ faster.

Always faster than what?  What are you comparing?  SBCL is a compiler,
Emacs is more than that.  

It should be quite obvious why SBCL is faster than the Emacs Lisp VM
(or even native).  Just look at this call to (car "foo"), and compare
what happens in Emacs.

* (disassemble 'foo)
; disassembly for FOO
; Size: 166 bytes. Origin: #x225D873F                         ; FOO
; 3F:       488B042590060020 MOV RAX, [#x20000690]
; 47:       488945F8         MOV [RBP-8], RAX
; 4B:       48892C2560060020 MOV [#x20000660], RBP
; 53:       488B142518000020 MOV RDX, [#x20000018]
; 5B:       488D4210         LEA RAX, [RDX+16]
; 5F:       483B042520000020 CMP RAX, [#x20000020]
; 67:       7770             JA L2
; 69:       4889042518000020 MOV [#x20000018], RAX
; 71: L0:   488B0570FFFFFF   MOV RAX, [RIP-144]               ; "foo"
; 78:       488902           MOV [RDX], RAX
; 7B:       48C7420817010020 MOV QWORD PTR [RDX+8], #x20000117  ; NIL
; 83:       80CA07           OR DL, 7
; 86:       48312C2560060020 XOR [#x20000660], RBP
; 8E:       7402             JEQ L1
; 90:       CC09             INT3 9                           ; pending 
interrupt trap
; 92: L1:   4C8D4424F0       LEA R8, [RSP-16]
; 97:       4883EC30         SUB RSP, 48
; 9B:       BFAF0B1520       MOV EDI, #x20150BAF              ; 'LIST
; A0:       488B3551FFFFFF   MOV RSI, [RIP-175]               ; '(VALUES
                                                              ;   (SIMPLE-ARRAY 
..))
; A7:       488B0552FFFFFF   MOV RAX, [RIP-174]               ; '("foo")
; AE:       498940F0         MOV [R8-16], RAX
; B2:       488B054FFFFFFF   MOV RAX, [RIP-177]               ; "(CAR \"foo\")"
; B9:       498940E8         MOV [R8-24], RAX
; BD:       49C740E017010020 MOV QWORD PTR [R8-32], #x20000117  ; NIL
; C5:       B90C000000       MOV ECX, 12
; CA:       498928           MOV [R8], RBP
; CD:       498BE8           MOV RBP, R8
; D0:       B882B12620       MOV EAX, #x2026B182              ; #<FDEFN 
SB-C::%COMPILE-TIME-TYPE-ERROR>
; D5:       FFD0             CALL RAX
; D7:       CC10             INT3 16                          ; Invalid 
argument count trap
; D9: L2:   6A10             PUSH 16
; DB:       FF1425B0080020   CALL [#x200008B0]                ; #x21A00540: 
LIST-ALLOC-TRAMP
; E2:       5A               POP RDX
; E3:       EB8C             JMP L0
NIL
* 

   > But isn't that what we do already with compilation and in
   > particular native compilation, why can't that add
   > optimizations for the native system?

   If we talk about type checking, Elisp uses dynamic typing and
   compilation cannot do much about it. Native compilation also does not
   touch C subroutines - the place where typechecks are performed.

SBCL implements a Lisp, Lisp by definition is dynamically typed.