Perl versus Python 3 fastest programs

Back in April 2010, Russ Cox charitably suggested that only fannkuch-redux, fasta, k-nucleotide, mandlebrot, nbody, reverse-complement and spectral-norm were close to fair comparisons. As someone who implemented programming languages, his interest was "measuring the quality of the generated code when both compilers are presented with what amounts to the same program."

Differences in approach - to memory management, parallel programming, regex, arbitrary precision arithmetic, implementation technique - don't fit in that kind-of fair comparison — but we still have to deal with them.

These are only the fastest programs. There may be additional measurements for programs which seem more-like a fair comparison to you. Always look at the source code.

spectral-norm
source	secs	mem	gz	busy	cpu load
Perl	38.15	11,784	555	146.68	95% 97% 95% 97%
Python 3	169.87	49,188	417	675.02	100% 99% 99% 99%
reverse-complement
source	secs	mem	gz	busy	cpu load
Perl	10.50	1,494,784	287	10.62	0% 0% 1% 100%
Python 3	16.93	1,777,852	434	17.58	78% 21% 4% 0%
k-nucleotide
source	secs	mem	gz	busy	cpu load
Perl	56.62	1,069,148	476	190.22	70% 86% 87% 93%
Python 3	72.24	199,856	1967	275.38	94% 94% 96% 96%
n-body
source	secs	mem	gz	busy	cpu load
Perl	735.92	6,292	1429	744.19	96% 0% 0% 4%
Python 3	865.18	8,176	1196	874.96	2% 20% 79% 0%
regex-redux
source	secs	mem	gz	busy	cpu load
Perl	16.39	157,044	820	46.71	81% 60% 85% 59%
Python 3	18.45	457,340	512	37.52	69% 37% 50% 48%
fannkuch-redux
source	secs	mem	gz	busy	cpu load
Perl	561.62	11,872	570	2,239.50	100% 100% 100% 100%
Python 3	534.40	47,236	950	2,104.05	99% 97% 99% 99%
pidigits
source	secs	mem	gz	busy	cpu load
Perl	3.69	8,300	261	3.80	1% 1% 1% 100%
Python 3	3.47	10,356	386	3.53	1% 1% 0% 100%
fasta
source	secs	mem	gz	busy	cpu load
Perl	90.15	54,920	871	91.86	20% 1% 1% 80%
Python 3	63.55	844,180	1947	129.71	40% 71% 33% 61%
binary-trees
source	secs	mem	gz	busy	cpu load
Perl	172.50	2,200,640	648	573.15	72% 87% 73% 100%
Python 3	80.30	448,004	589	286.50	95% 87% 87% 88%
mandelbrot
source	secs	mem	gz	busy	cpu load
Perl	687.48	44,096	586	2,749.07	100% 100% 100% 100%
Python 3	259.50	48,192	688	1,036.70	100% 100% 100% 100%
Perl	This is perl 5, version 30, subversion 0 (v5.30.0) built for x86_64-linux-thread-multi
Python 3	Python 3.8.0