IronPython vs CPython: faster in 1.6 times?

[Istvan Albert]

On Feb 5, 12:31 pm, dmitrey <dmitrey.kros... at scipy.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
> the urlhttp://torquedev.blogspot.com/2008/02/changes-in-air.html
> (blog of a game developers)
> says IronPython is faster than CPython in 1.6 times.
> Is it really true?

This is a second time around that IronPython piqued my interest
sufficiently to create a toy program to benchmark it and I must say
the results are not encouraging:

$ python bench.py
Elapsed time: 1.10 s

$ ipy bench.py
Elapsed time:65.01 s

and here is the benchmark program:

import time
start = time.time()

def foo(a):
    return a * a

data = {}
for i in xrange( 10**6 ):
    data[i] = foo(i)

print 'Elapsed time:%5.2f s' % ( time.time() - start)