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Ruby speed improvements with YARV

In case you didn't know, a new virtual machine for Ruby called YARV (Yet Another Ruby VM) has been integrated into testing for Ruby 1.9.

In my own (very informal) testing, I've gotten speed ups of 2x to about 8x.
You can download it from the ruby-lang.org website.

Also, take a glance at this page for some benchmarks. http://www.antoniocangiano.com/artic...us-vs-cardinal

:)

EDIT: I thought I'd add a little example.

def fib(n)
  if n < 3
    1
  else
    fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2)
  end
end
 
fib(34)

def fib(n):
    if n < 3:
        return 1
    else:
        return fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2)
 
fib(34)

Ruby 1.8.5

$ time ruby fib.rb



real    0m15.306s

user    0m13.273s

sys     0m1.984s

Python 2.4.4

$ time python fib.py



real    0m6.857s

user    0m6.736s

sys     0m0.036s

Ruby 1.9 (2007 - 02 - 25)

$ time /usr/local/src/ruby/ruby fib.rb



real    0m2.048s

user    0m2.012s

sys     0m0.016s

I'm going to muse that if one needs to be concerned about performance, then one needs a language that reflects one's ability to code, and not a language that reflects the abilities of some version of its own implementation. The latter approach leaves one chasing after chimera, rather than ability.

I'd agree that speed is not as important as the ability to be efficient when writing code.

I just made a point of this because many Ruby people have been complaining about the slow speed of the language. Now, there is some progress being made in that area. It's exciting. :)