Lua Challenge: Can you improve the mandelbrot implementation’s performance?

Question

Status: So far the best answer's program executes in 33% of the time of the original program! But there is probably still other ways to optimize it.

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Lua is currently the fastest scripting language out there, however Lua scores really bad in a few benchmarks against C/C++.

One of those is the mandelbrot test (Generate Mandelbrot set portable bitmap file N=16,000), where it scores a horrible 1:109(Multi Core) or 1:28(Single Core)

Since the Delta in speed is quite large, this is a good candidate for optimizations. Also I'm sure some that those who know who Mike Pall is might believe its not possible to optimize this any further, but that's blatantly wrong. Anyone who has done optimizations knows it is always possible to do better. Besides I did manage to get some extra performance with a few tweaks, so I know its possible :)

-- The Computer Language Shootout
-- http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/
-- contributed by Mike Pall

local width = tonumber(arg and arg[1]) or 100
local height, wscale = width, 2/width
local m, limit2 = 50, 4.0
local write, char = io.write, string.char

write("P4\n", width, " ", height, "\n")

for y=0,height-1 do
  local Ci = 2*y / height - 1
  for xb=0,width-1,8 do
    local bits = 0
    local xbb = xb+7
    for x=xb,xbb < width and xbb or width-1 do
      bits = bits + bits
      local Zr, Zi, Zrq, Ziq = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
      local Cr = x * wscale - 1.5
      for i=1,m do
        local Zri = Zr*Zi
        Zr = Zrq - Ziq + Cr
        Zi = Zri + Zri + Ci
        Zrq = Zr*Zr
        Ziq = Zi*Zi
        if Zrq + Ziq > limit2 then
          bits = bits + 1
          break
        end
      end
    end
    if xbb >= width then
      for x=width,xbb do bits = bits + bits + 1 end
    end
    write(char(255-bits))
  end
end

So how could this be optimized (of course as with any optimization you have to measure your implementation to be sure its faster). And you aren't allowed to alter the C-core of Lua for this, or use LuaJit, its about finding ways to optimizing one of Lua's weak weak points.

Edit: Putting a Bounty on this as to make the challenge more fun.

Answer 1

So here's ~40% for a start:

-- The Computer Language Shootout
-- http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/
-- contributed by Mike Pall

local width = tonumber(arg and arg[1]) or 100
local height, wscale = width, 2/width
local m, limit2 = 50, 4.0
local write, char = io.write, string.char

function addChar (line, c)
    table.insert(line, c)
    for i=table.getn(line)-1, 1, -1 do
        if string.len(line[i]) > string.len(line[i+1]) then
            break
            end
        line[i] = line[i] .. table.remove(line)
        end
    end

local h2 = math.floor(height/2)
local hm = height - h2*2
local top_half = {}
for y=0,h2+hm do
    local Ci = 2*y / height - 1
    local line = {""}
    for xb=0,width-1,8 do
        local bits = 0
        local xbb = xb+7
        for x=xb,xbb < width and xbb or width-1 do
            bits = bits + bits
            local Zr, Zi, Zrq, Ziq = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
            local Cr = x * wscale - 1.5
            for i=1,m do
                local Zri = Zr*Zi
                Zr = Zrq - Ziq + Cr
                Zi = Zri + Zri + Ci
                Zrq = Zr*Zr
                Ziq = Zi*Zi
                if Zrq + Ziq > limit2 then
                    bits = bits + 1
                    break
                    end
                end
            end
        for x=width,xbb do 
            bits = bits + bits + 1 
            end
        addChar(line,char(255-bits))
        end
    line = table.concat(line) 
    table.insert(top_half,line)
    end

write("P4\n", width, " ", height, "\n")
for y=1,h2+hm do
    write(top_half[y])
    end
for y=h2,1,-1 do
    write(top_half[y])
    end

-- MarkusQ

Answer 2

Now that there is at least one answer faster than my solution I'll post my answer

-- The Computer Language Shootout
-- http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/
-- contributed by Mike Pall

local width = tonumber(arg and arg[1]) or 100
local height, wscale = width, 2/width
local m, limit2 = 50, 4.0
local write, char = io.write, string.char
local insert = table.insert
local results={}
write("P4\n", width, " ", height, "\n")

for y=0,height-1 do
  local Ci = 2*y / height - 1
  for xb=0,width-1,8 do
    local bits = 0
    local xbb = xb+7
    for x=xb,xbb < width and xbb or width-1 do
      bits = bits + bits
      local Zr, Zi, Zrq, Ziq = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
      local Cr = x * wscale - 1.5
      for i=1,m do
        local Zri = Zr*Zi
        Zr = Zrq - Ziq + Cr
        Zi = Zri + Zri + Ci
        Zrq = Zr*Zr
        Ziq = Zi*Zi
        if Zrq + Ziq > limit2 then
          bits = bits + 1
          break
        end
      end
    end
    if xbb >= width then
      for x=width,xbb do bits = bits + bits + 1 end
    end
    insert(results,(char(255-bits)))
  end
end
write(table.concat(results))

The trick is storing values to a table before sending them to the output. Something as simple as this reduced the run time to 58%.