Perl VS Lua benchmarks

Current benchmark data was generated on Sun Jun 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
lua 1.lua 3411ms 55ms 172.9MB 3287ms 110ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 104.9MB 4947ms 37ms lua 5.4.7
perl 1.pl timeout 0.0ms 77.8MB 4960ms 27ms perl 5.40.2

Input: 15

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 287ms 0.8ms 15.8MB 267ms 7ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua 818ms 12ms 16.9MB 803ms 0ms lua 5.4.7
perl 1.pl 1815ms 12ms 14.4MB 1800ms 0ms perl 5.40.2

fasta

Input: 2500000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
perl 1.pl 3556ms 18ms 10.9MB 3543ms 0ms perl 5.40.2

Input: 250000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
perl 1.pl 367ms 3.7ms 6.6MB 357ms 0ms perl 5.40.2

helloworld

Input: QwQ

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 1.3ms 0.1ms 2.1MB 0ms 0ms lua 5.4.7
lua 1.lua 1.4ms 0.2ms 2.4MB 0ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
perl 1.pl 2.6ms 0.3ms 5.3MB 0ms 0ms perl 5.40.2

nbody

Input: 5000000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 4.lua 713ms 2.3ms 2.3MB 707ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 4.lua timeout 0.0ms 2.3MB 4990ms 0ms lua 5.4.7
perl 2.pl timeout 0.0ms 6.1MB 4990ms 0ms perl 5.40.2

Input: 500000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 4.lua 75ms 0.3ms 2.3MB 70ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 4.lua 1123ms 35ms 2.3MB 1117ms 0ms lua 5.4.7
perl 2.pl 2719ms 106ms 6.1MB 2707ms 0ms perl 5.40.2

spectral-norm

Input: 8000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 4062ms 9.7ms 2.5MB 4053ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 2.5MB 4990ms 0ms lua 5.4.7
perl 4.pl timeout 0.0ms 9.9MB 19830ms 0ms perl 5.40.2

Input: 4000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 1019ms 1.0ms 2.4MB 1010ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 2.1MB 4990ms 0ms lua 5.4.7
perl 4.pl timeout 0.0ms 10.0MB 19553ms 10ms perl 5.40.2

Input: 2000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
lua 1.lua 259ms 2.2ms 2.3MB 250ms 0ms luajit 2.1.0-beta3
perl 4-m.pl 3429ms 2.4ms 9.5MB 13317ms 7ms perl 5.40.2
lua 1.lua timeout 0.0ms 2.0MB 4990ms 0ms lua 5.4.7