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Comment by mtm | Hacker News Reader

A real shame that Forth wasn't included in the tested languages. Chuck Moore has been an advocate for more energy efficient computation for a while now.

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The tests come from the benchmark game. If you want to see Forth, implement the tests in Forth:

http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/

> The tests come from the benchmark game. If you want to see Forth, implement the tests in Forth:

But perhaps archive your code elsewhere. Github? Lots of language communities participated in past versions of the game. Like gforth and bigforth on shootout.alioth.debian.org circa 2008. Now it seems little remains but a few archive.org snapshots without source. Though perhaps all of that code was archived somewhere else that I'm not quickly finding?

It seems like you are entirely ignorant of the facts.

Sitting in the same old-repo, a GForth binary-trees program from 2005 --

https://alioth.debian.org/scm/viewvc.php/shootout/bench/bina...

edit Now it seems little remains but for you to lift-that-shade and tell-everyone how amazing it is that someone took the trouble to archive those obscure old programs.

@igouy points out that while the old shootout site is gone, its language files are still available[1]. There are about 70 benchmarks, in about 70 languages. I remember them as interesting multilingual browsing.

Unlike the old shootout, adding languages directly to benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org is not an option. "Because I know it will take more time than I choose. Been there; done that."[2] :) Instead, the code is available[3], and communities are invited to document their own benchmarksgame comparisons[2], such as Nim''s[4]. The OP used different code[5].

A brief glance at the current benchmarks, suggests there is some overlap with the old ones. Or at least an overlap of names - the requirements may have changed. So it might be possible to get started fairly easily? Perhaps even to do several languages...

[1] https://alioth.debian.org/scm/viewvc.php/shootout/bench/?roo... [2] https://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/play.html [3] https://github.com/Byron/benchmarksgame-cvs-mirror [4] https://github.com/def-/nim-benchmarksgame [5] https://github.com/greensoftwarelab/Energy-Languages

It's a pity that the OP didn't include Nim despite benchmark files for it being available.

If a summary of the test data is/were machine readable in the individual language repos, perhaps one could create an automated aggregation? A distributed/federated version of the old shootout. One with lower maintenance requirements. bendmarksgame-results.json?

The data would be crufty, of limited comparability. But combining easily browsable links to colorized source code, with "just for a rough feel" speed relative to C, might be sufficient for the use case of raising language awareness - "What is this C-speed-like language I've never heard of? Oh, that looks pretty! I think I'll explore this language's web page..."

Or alternately, use the language files on github to create a new, broader benchmarksgame. That is, distribute the work of benchmark revisions and makefile compiler options, but keep the testing centralized. I've no idea of the relative costs of those tasks, or of others. But a continuous integration shootout sounds intriguing.

> A distributed/federated version of the old shootout

It would be wonderful but how do you ensure any form of hardware consistency?

> Unlike the old shootout, adding languages directly to benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org is not an option

No, not unlike the old shootout -- exactly like it !

Please stop making things up.

> There are about 70 benchmarks…

Most of which were replaced by something better.

I'd rather say it begun to be a focus with its latest processors because it's the only hope they have to sell Forth processors. I remember he mentioned introducing a lot of complexity in its previous design to achieve very high speed for exactly the same reason (the only hope we have to sell a Forth processor is to make it super-fast), which was a bit in contradiction with the reason why he moved from software to hardware - simplifying globally the hardware/software combo.

Yes, see several minutes starting around 01:18 in this talk:

https://www.infoq.com/presentations/power-144-chip

As for efficiency, he mentions 7 picojoules per instruction in his forth chips.

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