IronPython vs CPython: faster in 1.6 times?

[dmitrey]

Hi all,
the url http://torquedev.blogspot.com/2008/0...es-in-air.html
(blog of a game developers)
says IronPython is faster than CPython in 1.6 times.
Is it really true?
If yes, what are IronPython drawbacks vs CPython?
And is it possible to use IronPython in Linux?

D.

[Jeff]

IronPython runs on top of .NET. I would be suspect of any claims that
it is faster than cPython, just as I would of claims that Stackless or
Jython are faster.

[Steve Holden]

Jeff wrote:

IronPython runs on top of .NET. I would be suspect of any claims that
it is faster than cPython, just as I would of claims that Stackless or
Jython are faster.

Well don't be. There are benchmarks that clearly show IronPython as
faster for selected tests. Other tests show CPython running more quickly.

As always, a benchmark is only really valuable on a typical workload for
the intended application.

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden [phone] [phone]
Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/

[bearophileHUGS]

Mike C. Fletcher:

Not sure if Mono also provides a speedup.

There is a set of good benchmarks here, the answer is negative:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/sa...=all&lang=iron

Bye,
bearophile

[Stefan Behnel]

be************@lycos.com schrieb:

Mike C. Fletcher:

>Not sure if Mono also provides a speedup.

There is a set of good benchmarks here, the answer is negative:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/sa...=all&lang=iron

This doesn't look like Mono to me:

IronPython 1.1 (1.1) on .NET 2.0.50727.42

Stefan

[Istvan Albert]

On Feb 5, 12:31 pm, dmitrey <[e-mail]:

Hi all,
the urlhttp://torquedev.blogspot.com/2008/02/changes-in-air.html
(blog of a game developers)
says IronPython is faster than CPython in 1.6 times.
Is it really true?

This is a second time around that IronPython piqued my interest
sufficiently to create a toy program to benchmark it and I must say
the results are not encouraging:

$ python bench.py
Elapsed time: 1.10 s

$ ipy bench.py
Elapsed time:65.01 s

and here is the benchmark program:

import time
start = time.time()

def foo(a):
return a * a

data = {}
for i in xrange( 10**6 ):
data[i] = foo(i)

print 'Elapsed time:%5.2f s' % ( time.time() - start)

[Arnaud Delobelle]

On Feb 5, 8:01*pm, Istvan Albert <[e-mail]:

On Feb 5, 12:31 pm, dmitrey <[e-mail]:

Hi all,
the urlhttp://torquedev.blogspot.com/2008/02/changes-in-air.html
(blog of a game developers)
says IronPython is faster than CPython in 1.6 times.
Is it really true?

This is a second time around that IronPython piqued my interest
sufficiently to create a toy program to benchmark it and I must say
the results are not encouraging:

$ python bench.py
Elapsed time: 1.10 s

$ ipy bench.py
Elapsed time:65.01 s

and here is the benchmark program:

import time
start = time.time()

def foo(a):
* * return a * a

data = {}
for i in xrange( 10**6 ):
* * data[i] = foo(i)

print 'Elapsed time:%5.2f s' % ( time.time() - start)

Could it be because .NET doesn't have arbitrary length integer types
and your little benchmark will create lots of integers 2**32 ?
What is the result if you replace foo(a) with

def foo(a): return sqrt(a)

--
Arnaud

[Istvan Albert]

On Feb 5, 4:56 pm, Arnaud Delobelle <[e-mail]:

Could it be because .NET doesn't have arbitrary length integer types
and your little benchmark will create lots of integers 2**32 ?
What is the result if you replace foo(a) with

def foo(a): return sqrt(a)

Good observation, in the case above the run times are about the same.

i.

[mensanator]

On Feb 5, 3:56*pm, Arnaud Delobelle <[e-mail]:

On Feb 5, 8:01*pm, Istvan Albert <[e-mail]:

On Feb 5, 12:31 pm, dmitrey <[e-mail]:

Hi all,
the urlhttp://torquedev.blogspot.com/2008/02/changes-in-air.html
(blog of a game developers)
says IronPython is faster than CPython in 1.6 times.
Is it really true?

This is a second time around that IronPython piqued my interest
sufficiently to create a toy program to benchmark it and I must say
the results are not encouraging:

$ python bench.py
Elapsed time: 1.10 s

$ ipy bench.py
Elapsed time:65.01 s

and here is the benchmark program:

import time
start = time.time()

def foo(a):
* * return a * a

data = {}
for i in xrange( 10**6 ):
* * data[i] = foo(i)

print 'Elapsed time:%5.2f s' % ( time.time() - start)

Could it be because .NET doesn't have arbitrary length integer types

A good reason to not use it.

and your little benchmark will *create lots of integers 2**32 ?
What is the result if you replace foo(a) with

def foo(a): return sqrt(a)

--
Arnaud- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Luis_M._Gonz=E1lez?=]

On 5 feb, 14:31, dmitrey <[e-mail]:

Hi all,
the urlhttp://torquedev.blogspot.com/2008/02/changes-in-air.html
(blog of a game developers)
says IronPython is faster than CPython in 1.6 times.
Is it really true?
If yes, what are IronPython drawbacks vs CPython?
And is it possible to use IronPython in Linux?

D.

I posted a little benchmark some time ago in ironpython's list that
showed a big performance gap between both implementations (being
cpython much faster than ironpython).
Jim Hugunin replied showing that making the script more abstract
(encapsulating code as much as possible into functions) the .NET
framework makes a better job at optimizing everything.

So I took Istvan script and made a little modification as follows:

import time

def foo(a):
return a * a

def do():
start = time.time()
data = {}
for i in xrange( 10**6 ):
data[i] = foo(i)
print 'Elapsed time:%5.2f s' % ( time.time() - start)

do() # pre-run to avoid initialization time
do()

import psyco
psyco.full()

print '\nNow with psyco...\n'

do()
do()

input()

The result is that it runs slighty faster in both, IP and CP, but
cpython is still faster (around 2x) than ironpython.
However, when using psyco simply blows everything out of the water...

These are my results.

Ironpython 2.0 Alpha 8:
Elapsed time: 3.14 s
Elapsed time: 3.36 s

cpyhon 2.5:
Elapsed time: 1.55 s
Elapsed time: 1.58 s

Now with psyco...

Elapsed time: 0.88 s
Elapsed time: 0.80 s

[Christian Heimes]

Luis M. González wrote:

The result is that it runs slighty faster in both, IP and CP, but
cpython is still faster (around 2x) than ironpython.
However, when using psyco simply blows everything out of the water...

CPython is very fast here because it keeps blocks of allocated integer
objects to reduce the memory overhead. Your test shows that Python
highly specialized and optimized memory management for ints is superior
over IronPython's more general memory management. It also shows that
psyco optimized the function call. It's probably inlined.

You could replace foo(i) by i*i and see how much function calls affect
the speed.

Christian

[Steve Holden]

Christian Heimes wrote:

Luis M. González wrote:

>The result is that it runs slighty faster in both, IP and CP, but
cpython is still faster (around 2x) than ironpython.
However, when using psyco simply blows everything out of the water...

CPython is very fast here because it keeps blocks of allocated integer
objects to reduce the memory overhead. Your test shows that Python
highly specialized and optimized memory management for ints is superior
over IronPython's more general memory management. It also shows that
psyco optimized the function call. It's probably inlined.

You could replace foo(i) by i*i and see how much function calls affect
the speed.

At the risk of boring you all, allow me to repeat:

"""
As always, a benchmark is only really valuable on a typical workload for
the intended application.
"""

There is no "better" and "worse" in the general case. Make rational
decisions. Benchmark your applications, don't scheme to make an
arbitrary benchmark run faster.

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden [phone] [phone]
Holden Web LLC http://www.holdenweb.com/

[bearophileHUGS]

Stefan Behnel:

This doesn't look like Mono to me:
IronPython 1.1 (1.1) on .NET 2.0.50727.42

You are right! I think this shows that IronPython isn't faster than
CPython at all :-) (And it uses more memory).

Bye,
bearophile

[Isaac Gouy]

On Feb 5, 11:47 am, Stefan Behnel <[e-mail]:

[e-mail] schrieb:

Mike C. Fletcher:

Not sure if Mono also provides a speedup.

There is a set of good benchmarks here, the answer is negative:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/sa...?test=all&lang...

This doesn't look like Mono to me:

IronPython 1.1 (1.1) on .NET 2.0.50727.42

Stefan

Have you actually looked at the version string from IronPython-1.1-
Bin.zip running on Mono?

[Isaac Gouy]

On Feb 6, 12:04 am, [e-mail] wrote:

Stefan Behnel:

This doesn't look like Mono to me:
IronPython 1.1 (1.1) on .NET 2.0.50727.42

You are right!

No.

I think this shows that IronPython isn't faster than
CPython at all :-) (And it uses more memory).

[Fuzzyman]

On Feb 5, 7:47 pm, Stefan Behnel <[e-mail]:

[e-mail] schrieb:

Mike C. Fletcher:

Not sure if Mono also provides a speedup.

There is a set of good benchmarks here, the answer is negative:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/sa...?test=all&lang...

This doesn't look like Mono to me:

IronPython1.1 (1.1) on .NET 2.0.50727.42

Running on Debian? Fairly unlikely. :-)

Fuzzyman
http://www.manning.com/foord

>
Stefan

[Carsten Haese]

On Wed, 2008-02-06 at 13:39 -0800, Fuzzyman wrote:

On Feb 5, 7:47 pm, Stefan Behnel <[e-mail]:

[e-mail] schrieb:

Mike C. Fletcher:
>Not sure if Mono also provides a speedup.

There is a set of good benchmarks here, the answer is negative:
>http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/sa...hp?test=all〈...

This doesn't look like Mono to me:

IronPython1.1 (1.1) on .NET 2.0.50727.42

Running on Debian? Fairly unlikely. :-)

Well, that *is* what the version string reports for IronPython on Mono
on Linux:

$ uname -sr
Linux 2.6.18-1.2200.fc5smp
$ mono ipy.exe
IronPython 1.1 (1.1) on .NET 2.0.50727.42
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

--
Carsten Haese
http://informixdb.sourceforge.net

[Stefan Behnel]

Isaac Gouy wrote:

On Feb 5, 11:47 am, Stefan Behnel <[e-mail]:

>[e-mail] schrieb:

>>Mike C. Fletcher:
Not sure if Mono also provides a speedup.
There is a set of good benchmarks here, the answer is negative:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/sa...?test=all&lang...

This doesn't look like Mono to me:

IronPython 1.1 (1.1) on .NET 2.0.50727.42

Stefan

Have you actually looked at the version string from IronPython-1.1-
Bin.zip running on Mono?

Why? Would that look like Mono? :)

Stefan

[Stefan Behnel]

Fuzzyman wrote:

On Feb 5, 7:47 pm, Stefan Behnel <[e-mail]:

>[e-mail] schrieb:

>>Mike C. Fletcher:
Not sure if Mono also provides a speedup.
There is a set of good benchmarks here, the answer is negative:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/sa...?test=all&lang...

This doesn't look like Mono to me:

IronPython1.1 (1.1) on .NET 2.0.50727.42

Running on Debian? Fairly unlikely. :-)

Why? Wasn't .NET supposed to be platform independent code and all that? ;)

Stefan

[Isaac Gouy]

On Feb 6, 1:54 pm, Stefan Behnel <[e-mail]:

Isaac Gouy wrote:

On Feb 5, 11:47 am, Stefan Behnel <[e-mail]:

[e-mail] schrieb:

>Mike C. Fletcher:
Not sure if Mono also provides a speedup.
There is a set of good benchmarks here, the answer is negative:
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/sa...hp?test=all〈...
This doesn't look like Mono to me:

IronPython 1.1 (1.1) on .NET 2.0.50727.42

Stefan

Have you actually looked at the version string from IronPython-1.1-
Bin.zip running on Mono?

Why? Would that look like Mono? :)

Stefan

Why? Because then you'd be doing more than expressing your personal
ignorance.

[Fuzzyman]

On Feb 5, 5:31 pm, dmitrey <[e-mail]:

Hi all,
the urlhttp://torquedev.blogspot.com/2008/02/changes-in-air.html
(blog of a game developers)
saysIronPythonis faster than CPython in 1.6 times.
Is it really true?
If yes, what areIronPythondrawbacks vs CPython?
And is it possible to useIronPythonin Linux?

D.

Another interesting little benchmark of CPython and IronPython. Can't
see the code, but it looks like an implementation of the 11 queens
problem and IronPython comes out a clear winner on this one. (Looks
like no benchmark for psyco.)

http://www.sokoide.com/index.php?itemid=1427

Michael
http://www.manning.com/foord

[bearophileHUGS]

Fuzzyman:

Another interesting little benchmark of CPython and IronPython. Can't
see the code, but it looks like an implementation of the 11 queens
problem and IronPython comes out a clear winner on this one. (Looks
like no benchmark for psyco.)

If you want a more reliable set of benchmarks, take all the shootout
benchmarks, and try them on IronPython on dotnet, on CPython and on
Psyco.

Bye,
bearophile

[Fuzzyman]

On Feb 12, 7:49 pm, [e-mail] wrote:

Fuzzyman:

Another interesting little benchmark of CPython and IronPython. Can't
see the code, but it looks like an implementation of the 11 queens
problem and IronPython comes out a clear winner on this one. (Looks
like no benchmark for psyco.)

If you want a more reliable set of benchmarks, take all the shootout
benchmarks, and try them on IronPython on dotnet, on CPython and on
Psyco.

Go for it!

Bye,
bearophile