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From: shebs@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley Shebs)
Newsgroups: net.lang.lisp
Subject: More Lisp vs Fortran History
Message-ID: <3243@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 13-Mar-85 17:46:06 EST
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.3243
Posted: Wed Mar 13 17:46:06 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 15-Mar-85 00:40:41 EST
Organization: Univ of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 17

I have uncovered an article in the SIGSAM Bulletin of March 1973
in which Richard Fateman compares Maclisp with Fortran (the DEC-F40
compiler).  He exhibits a program to compute (via iteration), one
thousand cube roots, first written in Fortran, then in Maclisp,
then in Macsyma.  The Fortran version took 2.22 seconds, the
Maclisp version 1.81.  A recursive reformulation of the Maclisp
code took 2.20 sec.  The Macsyma version had exactly the same
time as the Maclisp version (as might be expected).  This is
the entire article; obviously not a systematic study.

Also, I found an abstract of a Guy Steele paper presented at the
1977 Macsyma Users Conference.  It was entitled "Fast Arithmetic
in Maclisp" - the abstract I saw was in the May 1977 SIGSAM, and
made the speed claim for Maclisp.  I don't have access to the
paper; did Steele have any numbers?

						stan shebs