Hello CHICKEN users, I would like to announce the fourth and (hopefully) final major release of the numbers egg. This version features a change in the representation to use the full machine word. Previous versions were based on the Scheme48 representation, which left 2 bits unused. This change allows for a pretty major performance improvement, especially on big endian architectures.
Furthermore, the number->string and string->number conversions have been improved to be several orders of magnitude faster than numbers 3.1, especially for hexadecimal conversion. Division has been sped up by the use of an algorithm by Burnikel & Ziegler, the square root operation has been sped up by the use of a Karatsuba-like algorithm by Zimmermann. This new version of the numbers egg finally brings us up to a competitive level when compared with other major Scheme implementations. Especially for small to medium bignums, we're close to Gambit and Racket in many situations. For astronomically large numbers, FFT-based multiplication is still missing; this would be required if we want to compete with Gambit and GMP-based Schemes in this area. Finally, the last of the Scheme48 code has been dropped, which improves the licensing situation a little when this work will finally get imported into CHICKEN core. This could be quite an effort, so it will probably take a while before this becomes available. Cheers, Peter
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