Programming Language and compiler
Benchmarks

Lua VS OCaml benchmarks

Current benchmark data was generated on Fri Aug 01 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
ocaml 1.ml 3020ms 42ms 157.0MB 2927ms 77ms ocaml 5.3.0
lua 1.lua 3513ms 23ms 173.0MB 3370ms 130ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 105.0MB 4950ms 37ms lua 5.4.7

Input: 15

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
ocaml 1.ml 223ms 9.3ms 19.2MB 207ms 3ms ocaml 5.3.0
lua 1.lua 290ms 1.7ms 15.9MB 270ms 7ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua 817ms 0.3ms 17.0MB 800ms 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 1.4ms 0.1ms 2.4MB 0ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua 1.4ms 0.2ms 2.1MB 0ms 0ms lua 5.4.7
ocaml 1.ml 1.8ms 0.1ms 5.1MB 0ms 0ms ocaml 5.3.0

merkletrees

Input: 17

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
ocaml 1.ml 1113ms 16ms 70.2MB 1073ms 27ms ocaml 5.3.0
ocaml 2.ml 2055ms 6.7ms 91.8MB 2000ms 40ms ocaml 5.3.0
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 107.4MB 4947ms 40ms 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
ocaml 1.ml 146ms 2.9ms 21.7MB 130ms 7ms ocaml 5.3.0
ocaml 2.ml 358ms 7.5ms 27.6MB 340ms 3ms ocaml 5.3.0
lua 1.lua 1101ms 8.1ms 31.1MB 1073ms 17ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua 2192ms 63ms 28.8MB 2170ms 10ms lua 5.4.7

nbody

Input: 5000000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
ocaml 1.ml 373ms 2.9ms 5.2MB 363ms 0ms ocaml 5.3.0
lua 4.lua 711ms 0.9ms 2.4MB 700ms 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
ocaml 1.ml 42ms 0.9ms 5.3MB 30ms 0ms ocaml 5.3.0
lua 4.lua 77ms 1.2ms 2.3MB 70ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 4.lua 1145ms 12ms 2.3MB 1137ms 0ms lua 5.4.7

spectral-norm

Input: 8000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 4064ms 5.2ms 2.5MB 4053ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
ocaml 2.ml 4574ms 4.7ms 6.4MB 4563ms 0ms ocaml 5.3.0
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
lua 1.lua 1018ms 0.4ms 2.4MB 1010ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
ocaml 2.ml 1166ms 5.8ms 5.9MB 1153ms 0ms ocaml 5.3.0
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
lua 1.lua 258ms 0.6ms 2.3MB 250ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
ocaml 2.ml 295ms 3.8ms 5.2MB 283ms 0ms ocaml 5.3.0
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 2.1MB 4990ms 0ms lua 5.4.7