SpringFlowers AutumnMoon wrote:
> How fast does your Ruby run?
> 
> I got 53648 iterations per second running the following program,
> on an Intel 3.2 GHz HT, Win XP machine:

Here's something interesting.  The processor is Intel T7200 @ 2.00GHz, 
Linux Ubuntu.

1. With ruby 1.8.5. which comes packaged with Ubuntu:

    Ruby 1.8.5 on i486-linux
    It took 20.346013 seconds to run. 49149 iterations per
    second.

2. With ruby 1.9.0 (2006-06-08) which comes packaged in Ubuntu:

    Ruby 1.9.0 on i486-linux
    It took 23.875774 seconds to run. 41883 iterations per
    second.


3. With ruby 1.8.6 compiled from sources on the machine:

    Ruby 1.8.6 on i686-linux
    It took 7.107875 seconds to run. 140689 iterations per
    second.


Obviously, the target instruction set matters quite a lot.  I think I'll 
be compiling my own ruby from now on. :-)