CEK frames were already records (cek_frame in sx_types.ml), so the actual
hot-path bottleneck was prim_call "=" [...] in step_continue/step_eval
dispatch: each step did a Hashtbl lookup + 2x list cons + pattern match
just to compare frame-type strings.
Added a short-circuit fast path in prim_call (sx_runtime.ml) for the
hot operators: =, <, >, <=, >=, empty?, first, rest, len. These bypass
the primitives Hashtbl entirely and dispatch directly on value shape.
Inlined _fast_eq for scalar/string equality, which dominates frame-type
dispatch comparisons.
Added bin/bench_cek.exe with five tight-loop benchmarks (fib, loop,
map, reduce, let-heavy). Median of 7 runs:
fib(18) 2789ms -> 941ms (-66%)
loop(5000) 2018ms -> 620ms (-69%)
map sq xs(1000) 108ms -> 48ms (-56%)
reduce + ys(2000) 72ms -> 10ms (-86%)
let-heavy(2000) 491ms -> 271ms (-45%)
Tests: 4545/4545 passing baseline preserved (1339 pre-existing failures
unchanged).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
giles
a66c0f66f0