LispM Market Share

["William D. Gooch" <ai.gooch@MCC.COM>]

    Date: Mon, 15 Jan 90 10:08 EST
    From: Len%AIP1%TSD%atc.bendix.com@RELAY.CS.NET

    4. File read performance is crummy on the Lispms.  Since that's done so
       often, it leaves the impression that the Lispms are slow machines. 

This is quite true, and very unfortunate.

I should say, however, that Symbolics is not unaware of this issue, and
that progress is being made.  For instance, my measurements indicate
that text file i/o on an XL400 is roughly 2X faster than on a 3640 if
you use READ-LINE, and as much as 5X faster if you use READ-CHAR.