Most of these questions are answered in my original, longer post: http://hns.github.com/2010/09/21/benchmark.html.

The JSON I'm parsing is just objects with short string properties (around 10 characters). There's just one longer 25kb JSON string but that is never collected. As to Node configuration, can you provide some specific options to use? I've been asking about this on #node.js (and ryan) and I'm open to any suggestions.

Ringo is running with the server hotspot JVM without any further options.