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I was simply assuming that the average instruction for a Lisp implementation would be more substantial in terms of length the sequence of native instructions than an average instruction for a translation of C code. The closest thing that comes to my mind is the CLISP VM, which has fairly heavyweight instructions. The proposal doesn't give me an idea of how fine-grained the proposed instructions would be, or I must have missed it if it does.

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Indeed it doesn't mention the instruction set. The closest would be Self, which only has instructions to do message sends and read particular VM registers; which boil down to calls and pushes respectively. That part of the semantics of the proposed language are closer to Smalltalk heritage than Lisp; the expression orientation, syntax and, at lack of a better term, "nesting" are the Lisp influence. Say, Smalltalk provides variable declarations at the start of a method, we intend to provide LET/LETREC forms instead.

I would agree that CLISP bytecode would be heavier; this approach ("template compiler"?) has been used as a baseline JIT in e.g. Jalepeño for the JVM with some success, but being a baseline JIT it is not intended to be that fast either.

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