PyPy: JIT progress, 50% faster baseline than CPython
morepypy.blogspot.com
morepypy.blogspot.com
FWIW, LuaJIT runs everything 2-4x faster for me, and more so with long-running loops. Lua's semantics are simpler, though, so it's easier to determine which optimizations are applicable when. (The only downsides for LuaJIT are that it's only for i386, and that it uses about a third more space.)