[Shootout-list] Ray tracer

[Einar Karttunen]

Stephen Weeks <sweeks@sweeks.com> writes:
> I compared this to revision 1.2 of raytracer.mlton-2.mlton in the
> shootout CVS.  I see a 2.5 speedup in raytracer.mlton-2 over
> raytracer.mlton.  The speedup is partially due to algorithmic
> improvements (better bounding and intersection) and partially due to
> different ordering of the subscenes in the create function.  I believe
> all of these improvements fall outside the kinds of differences among
> implementations that are generally allowed in the shootout.
>
> The subscene ordering problem was already mentioned by Oleg Trott on
> comp.lang.functional.  As an example, reversing the subscene ordering
> in raytracer.mlton-2 slows it down by about 50%.


Yes, it is not very nice to look at a benchmark which has different
algorithmic implementations and no specification in english.
It makes little sense to contribute code before it has stabilized
as someone will probably find out an algorithmically better solution and
then one has to rewrite the submission.

Hoping for a spec in the benchmark which will tell what each submission
should do and what it may not do.

- Einar Karttunen