Faster structure accesses?

[Andrew Newell Mickish <am2q+@andrew.cmu.edu>]

We have done some timing tests of our system under MCL, and found some
surprising results.  In MCL (on a Mac IIx), an array reference is about
4 times slower than in Allegro on a SPARCstation ELC, but a structure
access is about 60 times slower!  Is this consistent with other people's
experience?

Our system has been optimized for Allegro lisp, and our data structures are
fundamentally based on DEFSTRUCT.  It would be nice if there was some way
to speed up structure references.  We already have our optimization flags
set to (speed 3) (safety 1) (space 0) (debug 3), which is the same as we
do in Allegro.  Is there any way to speed up this operation?

We would obviously prefer not to have a parallel implementation for the Mac,
where we used Pascal records (with ccl:rref and friends).  However, what are
the fastest alternatives available to us if this is the only way to get
satisfactory performance?

--Andrew Mickish