Lua VS Crystal benchmarks

Current benchmark data was generated on Mon Mar 31 2025, full log can be found HERE

CONTRIBUTIONS are WELCOME!

[x86_64][4 cores] AMD EPYC 7763 64-Core Processor (Model 1)

* -m in a file name stands for multi-threading or multi-processing

* -i in a file name stands for direct intrinsics usage. (Usage of simd intrinsics via libraries is not counted)

* -ffi in a file name stands for non-stdlib FFI usage

* (You may find time < time(user) + time(sys) for some non-parallelized programs, the overhead is from GC or JIT compiler, which are allowed to take advantage of multi-cores as that's more close to real-world scenarios.)

binarytrees

Input: 18

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 1256ms 12ms 64.0MB 1233ms 7ms crystal 1.15.1
lua 1.lua 3623ms 23ms 173.0MB 3477ms 133ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 104.9MB 4953ms 33ms lua 5.4.7

Input: 15

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 104ms 1.3ms 10.9MB 90ms 0ms crystal 1.15.1
lua 1.lua 292ms 3.1ms 15.9MB 267ms 10ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua 824ms 5.5ms 16.9MB 807ms 0ms lua 5.4.7

helloworld

Input: QwQ

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 1.5ms 0.2ms 2.3MB 0ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua 1.6ms 0.1ms 2.1MB 0ms 0ms lua 5.4.7
crystal 1.cr 1.9ms 0.1ms 2.9MB 0ms 0ms crystal 1.15.1

merkletrees

Input: 17

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 824ms 8.5ms 64.0MB 800ms 10ms crystal 1.15.1
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 107.4MB 4947ms 37ms lua 5.4.7
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 149.4MB 4923ms 63ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3

Input: 15

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 146ms 2.3ms 22.1MB 130ms 0ms crystal 1.15.1
lua 1.lua 1392ms 85ms 31.1MB 1360ms 13ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua 2291ms 16ms 28.6MB 2270ms 10ms lua 5.4.7

nbody

Input: 5000000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 344ms 1.7ms 3.1MB 333ms 0ms crystal 1.15.1
crystal 2.cr 345ms 2.2ms 3.1MB 337ms 0ms crystal 1.15.1
lua 4.lua 713ms 1.8ms 2.3MB 703ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 4.lua timeout 0.0ms 2.3MB 4990ms 0ms lua 5.4.7

Input: 500000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 2.cr 38ms 0.8ms 3.1MB 30ms 0ms crystal 1.15.1
crystal 1.cr 39ms 1.3ms 3.1MB 30ms 0ms crystal 1.15.1
lua 4.lua 75ms 1.1ms 2.4MB 70ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 4.lua 1112ms 26ms 2.3MB 1103ms 0ms lua 5.4.7

spectral-norm

Input: 8000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 3779ms 15ms 4.4MB 3773ms 0ms crystal 1.15.1
lua 1.lua 4068ms 9.8ms 2.5MB 4057ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 2.4MB 4990ms 0ms lua 5.4.7

Input: 4000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 952ms 5.3ms 4.3MB 943ms 0ms crystal 1.15.1
lua 1.lua 1021ms 2.2ms 2.4MB 1010ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 2.1MB 4990ms 0ms lua 5.4.7

Input: 2000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
crystal 1.cr 246ms 0.8ms 3.8MB 237ms 0ms crystal 1.15.1
lua 1.lua 261ms 2.8ms 2.3MB 250ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 2.0MB 4990ms 0ms lua 5.4.7