[Openmcl-devel] bignums on x8664

[R. Matthew Emerson]

I just checked in a change to the trunk (http://trac.clozure.com/openmcl/changeset/12839 
) that tries to multiply bignums on x8664 64-bits at a time.

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure whether this is a net win as  
currently implemented.  On the one hand, trivial benchmarks like (time  
(null (fact 10000))) seem to show a small performance regression with  
this new change.  On the other hand, the little benchmark in http://clozure.com/pipermail/openmcl-devel/2008-October/008591.html 
  shows an improvement.

I would be very interested to hear from users who use bignums a lot to  
see if this change makes a positive difference.   Otherwise, it might  
make sense to take it back out.