simple

First a few simple programs.

Half are naive line-by-line transliterations from the original C program; others are old initial 2004 and 2005 programs from the archives. The current Ruby mandelbrot multicore programs are 7x faster than this simple Ruby transliteration; and the exhaustively-optimised + multicore + vector-instruction C programs are more-like 25x faster than this simple C program.

source	secs	mem	gz
Intel C	23.49	19,736	433
C gcc #2	24.96	19,520	412
C gcc	26.23	19,520	433
Go #2	26.63	19,696	500
Go	27.63	19,696	469
Java	29.62	43,712	445
C# .NET	46.68	31,464	472
PHP #3	161.27	19,396	418
PHP #2	191.25	19,396	397
PHP	201.46	19,396	390
Java -Xint	8 min	34,972	445
Ruby #2	19 min	21,504	313
Ruby	20 min	21,248	341
Python 3 #3	22 min	19,656	392
Toit	26 min	19,644	387
Python 3 #2	30 min	19,656	337
Python 3	1h 11 min	19,656	380
Matz's Ruby	2h 35 min	11,052	335
Matz's Ruby #2	3h 13 min	11,056	307

Transliterations are obviously not idiomatic — does that matter for your purposes? When the archive Ruby #2 and Python #2 programs are most idiomatic they are furthest from identical — are they similar-enough to be comparable for your purposes? (The archive Python #2 program uses a built-in complex-number type.)

Differences in approach — to memory management, parallel programming, regex, arbitrary precision arithmetic, implementation technique — are part and parcel of using different programming languages.

The optimised mandelbrot programs are far from identical — does that matter for your purposes?

Then — As fast as C?

Now — As fast as SSE and AVX instructions?