Benchmark game challenge and some optimization questions

[Palli]

I want renewed interest in the Benchmark game (and please post progress here, also showing 1.9-DEV compared to 1.8.2).

An additional bonus to starting twice as fast, and making Julia fastest on some benchmarks:

$ /usr/bin/time --format "%M kB" julia -J BenchmarkingSysimage.so --startup-file=no --history-file=no -e0
95804 kB

compared to:

@rogerkeays

$ /usr/bin/time --format "%M kB" julia-1.7 -e0
152796 kB

that’s not enough for all benchmarks:

fannkuch-redux - Which programs are fastest? (Benchmarks Game) has single-threaded Lisp 44% faster than Julia or 13 sec. ahead, and we’re 5.8 times slower than fastest (multi-threaded).

Here single-threaded Julia could beat multi-threaded C++:

fasta - Which programs are fastest? (Benchmarks Game)

Julia startup speed cut in half. Was: (Unofficial) Julia 1.9 for lower latency (startup)

[None of this needs 1.9, I’m timing with 1.8.1 currently.] FYI: The search in the docs finds nothing for filter_stdlibs only for filter_stdlibs=true (and then only under Apps). That seems like a bug in the search function not your package (or then only for the markup you use). Would you be opposed to the official Julia binary download including a non-default sysimage for scripting and benchmarks (I think Debian’s would approve of it, though maybe only if it’s an official one) with it, as I des…