Is Ruby or other language going to run faster on Parrot?

Question

I just saw that there is a Ruby to Parrot compiler called Cardinal, which can create code to run on Parrot, which is a VM that can run byte-code. How is the performance of Ruby or any language compile to it and run there because for example, Ruby probably doesn't have pre-compiled byte code. Can it be faster running on Parrot? Python probably will be better off running as it is because it has .pyc.

Answer 1

Parrot development hasn't focused on optimisation yet. The roadmap always listed this at version 3 or 4 (Parrot is currently at version 2.9).

A big refactor branch which includes ripping out the JIT and replacing it with a new one is currently happening (refs: Lorito & JITRewrite).

The fruits of this should start showing as part of Parrot 3.0 which I think is due next spring.

Update

A likely roadmap has been posted by a Parrot Developer in his blog. Here is a summary of what he thinks the next 3 years maybe:

• 3.0 - New Garbage Collector
• 3.3 - Lorito prototype
• 4.0 - New object metamodel
• 5.0 - New JIT
• 6.0 - New concurrency system

/I3az/

Answer 2

Edit: I was looking at older results when newer ones are available. As of the most current benchmarks, which are still quite old, parrot beats the vanilla vm on a few tests, but is slower on others. A few tests it's not even able to complete.

yarv is the hands-down speed king for ruby performance.