[IronPython] pystone results for 1.0 vs 2.0a1 on various runtimes

[Sanghyeon Seo]

I believe some of you may be interested in these results.

In the video of DLR talk at MIX07, "the one and only powerpoint slide
that actually contains content" shows pystone numbers for various
versions of CPython and IronPython. (Seek to 37:50.)

IronPython 1.0: 90K
IronPython 2.0a1: 101K

I assume these numbers are on Microsoft .NET included in Windows
Vista. (Is it Orcas instead? Maybe that's why this differs from WinFX
result below?)

It shows 12% gain in pystone numbers. (I also note that IronPython 1.0
and 1.1 are virtually identical in terms of performance.)

However, I can't reproduce this performance gain on Mono. The best of
3 results on my laptop gives 32% loss:

IronPython 1.0: 31K
IronPython 2.0a1: 21K

Confused, I ran pystone on Windows XP PC to verify. Again, the results
didn't match the slide (21% loss):

IronPython 1.1: 68K
IronPython 2.0a1: 54K

I messaged M. David Peterson about the issue, and he gave me the
results on Windows Longhorn. Thanks a lot for this information. This
is 6% gain, which is much more consistent with the slide:

IronPython 1.1: 109K
IronPython 2.0a1: 116K

This seems to suggest that although IronPython 2.0 received
performance improvements compared to IronPython 1.0 and 1.1, these
improvements are quite dependent on underlying CLR runtime. Can
someone from IronPython team explain why this is so?

Following is a table summarizing effects of CLR runtime on relative
performance of IronPython 1.0/1.1 and 2.0.

Mono 1.2.4+: -32%
Whidbey: -21%
WinFX: +6%
MIX07 (Orcas?): +12%

-- 
Seo Sanghyeon