macOS Benchmark Snapshot

This page summarizes the current macOS benchmark

Environment:

• Script runner: run_benchmarks.sh
• Platform: macOS
• Baseline: native Lua 5.5 on the same machine
• CPU: macOS Apple Silicon M4 (by @sniper00)

Method:

• Values are shown as luars / native Lua * 100
• 100 means parity with native Lua
• 120 means luars is about 20% faster
• 80 means luars is about 20% slower

xychart-beta
    title "luars vs native Lua 5.5 on macOS"
    x-axis [arith, control, locals, funcs, closures, multiret, tables, tablelib, iters, math, meta, oop, coroutines, errors]
    y-axis "Relative throughput (%)" 0 --> 320
    bar [136, 143, 143, 119, 99, 105, 141, 301, 123, 140, 121, 109, 113, 120]
    line [100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100]

Script	Relative throughput
bench_arithmetic.lua	136%
bench_control_flow.lua	143%
bench_locals.lua	143%
bench_functions.lua	119%
bench_closures.lua	99%
bench_multiret.lua	105%
bench_tables.lua	141%
bench_table_lib.lua	301%
bench_iterators.lua	123%
bench_math.lua	140%
bench_metatables.lua	121%
bench_oop.lua	109%
bench_coroutines.lua	113%
bench_errors.lua	120%

Highlights:

• The strongest macOS win in this run is bench_table_lib.lua, mainly because table.insert, table.remove, table.sort, and table.move all outperform native Lua by a large margin in the raw run.
• bench_control_flow.lua, bench_locals.lua, bench_tables.lua, and bench_math.lua also show broad wins across most subtests.
• bench_closures.lua is effectively at parity in this run.

String microbenchmarks from the same raw capture:

• bench_strings.lua: about 99%
• bench_string_lib.lua: about 120%