Programming Language and compiler
Benchmarks

Perl VS Nim benchmarks

Current benchmark data was generated on Mon Jun 23 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
nim 2.nim 825ms 37ms 34.9MB 807ms 7ms nim 2.2.4
nim 2.nim 999ms 22ms 34.7MB 980ms 7ms nim/clang 2.2.4
perl 1.pl timeout 0.0ms 77.8MB 4963ms 27ms perl 5.40.2

Input: 15

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
nim 2.nim 77ms 1.9ms 5.5MB 67ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
nim 2.nim 93ms 2.8ms 5.8MB 83ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
perl 1.pl 1824ms 20ms 14.4MB 1807ms 3ms perl 5.40.2

fasta

Input: 2500000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
nim 2.nim 188ms 2.2ms 1.5MB 180ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
nim 2.nim 240ms 0.1ms 1.8MB 230ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 542ms 2.9ms 1.9MB 450ms 80ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 561ms 3.3ms 1.5MB 470ms 77ms nim 2.2.4
perl 1.pl 3560ms 16ms 10.9MB 3543ms 0ms perl 5.40.2

Input: 250000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
nim 2.nim 21ms 0.1ms 1.5MB 10ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
nim 2.nim 27ms 1.0ms 1.8MB 20ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 57ms 0.5ms 1.8MB 37ms 3ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 59ms 0.6ms 1.5MB 40ms 7ms nim 2.2.4
perl 1.pl 367ms 3.4ms 6.6MB 353ms 0ms perl 5.40.2

helloworld

Input: QwQ

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
nim 1.nim 1.0ms 0.0ms 1.6MB 0ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 1.1ms 0.0ms 1.9MB 0ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
perl 1.pl 2.6ms 0.2ms 5.1MB 0ms 0ms perl 5.40.2

nbody

Input: 5000000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
nim 2.nim 321ms 2.4ms 1.8MB 310ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
nim 2.nim 344ms 1.2ms 1.9MB 330ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
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
nim 2.nim 34ms 0.6ms 1.8MB 30ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
nim 2.nim 38ms 1.4ms 2.0MB 30ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
perl 2.pl 2829ms 163ms 6.1MB 2820ms 0ms perl 5.40.2

spectral-norm

Input: 8000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
nim 1.nim 3589ms 1.4ms 2.0MB 3580ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 3601ms 3.5ms 1.4MB 3593ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
perl 4.pl timeout 0.0ms 9.9MB 19817ms 10ms perl 5.40.2

Input: 4000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
nim 1.nim 899ms 0.7ms 1.5MB 890ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 903ms 1.2ms 1.3MB 893ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
perl 4.pl timeout 0.0ms 10.1MB 19537ms 10ms perl 5.40.2

Input: 2000

lang code time stddev peak-mem mem time(user) time(sys) compiler compiler/runtime
nim 1.nim 227ms 0.4ms 1.5MB 220ms 0ms nim/clang 2.2.4
nim 1.nim 228ms 1.8ms 1.3MB 220ms 0ms nim 2.2.4
perl 4-m.pl 3441ms 7.2ms 9.5MB 13347ms 3ms perl 5.40.2