Perl VS Zig 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
zig 1.zig 1880ms 29ms 49.0MB 1853ms 13ms zig 0.14.1
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
zig 1.zig 152ms 0.9ms 7.0MB 140ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
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
zig 1.zig 88ms 1.0ms 1.0MB 80ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
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
zig 1.zig 10ms 0.0ms 1.0MB 0ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
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
zig 1.zig 0.9ms 0.0ms 1.1MB 0ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
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
zig 3.zig 198ms 0.3ms 1.0MB 190ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
zig 2.zig 281ms 1.9ms 1.0MB 270ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
zig 1.zig 317ms 0.8ms 1.1MB 310ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
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
zig 3.zig 22ms 0.6ms 1.3MB 13ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
zig 2.zig 30ms 0.1ms 1.0MB 20ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
zig 1.zig 33ms 0.1ms 1.1MB 27ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
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
zig 1.zig 3686ms 3.1ms 1.4MB 3677ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
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
zig 1.zig 924ms 1.9ms 1.3MB 917ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
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
zig 1.zig 233ms 1.2ms 1.3MB 223ms 0ms zig 0.14.1
perl 4-m.pl 3441ms 7.2ms 9.5MB 13347ms 3ms perl 5.40.2