Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke)
Subject: Re: Squeezing more speed out of LISP.
In-Reply-To: hjstein@sunset.huji.ac.il's message of 18 Oct 94 13:57:42
Message-ID: <Cy0GnM.2AG@rheged.dircon.co.uk>
Organization: none. Disorganization: total.
References: <HJSTEIN.94Oct16172905@sunset.huji.ac.il><37s318$pr0@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu> <HJSTEIN.94Oct18135742@sunset.huji.ac.il>
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 06:57:21 GMT
Lines: 38

In article <HJSTEIN.94Oct18135742@sunset.huji.ac.il> hjstein@sunset.huji.ac.il (Harvey J. Stein) writes:

   In article <37s318$pr0@cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu> sef@CS.CMU.EDU
   (Scott Fahlman) writes:

      In article <HJSTEIN.94Oct16172905@sunset.huji.ac.il>
      hjstein@sunset.huji.ac.il (Harvey J. Stein) writes:

	 I've heard it said that maclisp used to produce numeric code as good
	 as an optimizing FORTRAN compiler.  To what extent can LISPs do this
	 today?  Which LISPs are best at it?  Which are worst?  

	<deletia>

      That's a lot of questions for one post.  :-)

      For numerical code, CMU Common Lisp is probably your best bet if it
      runs on the machine/os that you care about.

	<deletia>

   I'm afraid that I only have access to 486s running Linux, so as much
   as I'd like to use it, CMU CL is out of the question.

Hr'hhm. I suspect that, in the near future at least, a lot of serious
computer science students (and many professionals at home) will
'...only have access to 486s running Linux...'. Linux is a very good
system, and cheap :-} The feeling that CMU is the best non-commercial
CL around seems widespread, too.

Has anybody enough knowledge of the CMU source to have a feel of how
difficult this would be to port to Linux? Is this something that,
perhaps, a group of us could get together on over the net? It seems to
me that the goal might well be worth achieveing. If enough people mail
me on this I shall work out what it takes to set up a mailing list.

-- 
---------simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk
