Hi,

For fun I have implemented an nbody simulation following
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/benchmark.php?test=nbody&lang=all&sort=cpu
(code is attached).  I've compiled it with

  ocamlopt -o nbody.com -inline 3 -unsafe -ccopt -O2 nbody.ml

I've compared with the Java program they give.  I get (on a Pentium(R)
4 CPU 2.40GHz Debian):

n	OCaml	Java
1000	0.004	0.112
10000	0.016	0.112
100000	0.159	0.218
200000	0.284	0.370
500000	0.707	0.702
1000000	1.410	1.359
2000000	2.884	2.453
3000000	4.294	3.590
4000000	5.735	4.774

I am interested in explanations why OCaml seems asymptotically slower
than Java and ways to improve that.  My concern is actually not so
much for the shootout as for my own numerical programs.

Regards,
ChriS