Dolphin NG (NG stands for "Next Generation") is set to be a future version of Dolphin Smalltalk running under a high performance virtual machine and platform supplied by Lesser Software. If you've arrived at this page you're probably wondering when development will start and how long Dolphin NG will remain as just "vapourware".
Here's the great news; development commenced in July 2008 and is well under way. Many of the Dolphin tools you know and love are already up and running under the the new Vision VM and you can see the results below (click on the image for a larger view).
Note that the Scintilla source editing pane is already operational thus demonstrating the ability of the new system to host external components. Also note that the "Dolphin" prefix before each of the Dolphin MVP class names is purely temporary.
We don't yet have a target release date but already we have some initial benchmark comparisons between Dolphin NG and the existing X6 products. Please bear in mind that these are early results and the final marks are likely to be even more impressive.
STIC Benchmarks D6.1
Times in milliseconds (lower is better)
Towers Of Hanoi = 1503.78ms
Alloc Speed Test = 875ms
Array Write Speed = 1253ms
Dictionary Write Speed Test = 392ms
Floating Math Speed Test = 6442ms
Integer Math Speed Test = 781ms
Ordered Collection Iterate Speed Test = 3265ms
Ordered Collection Write Speed Test =883ms
String Compare Speed Test 1 = 122ms *
String Compare Speed Test 2 = 5026ms
Fixed Point Math Speed Test = 39348ms
Polymorphism Speed Test = 2403ms
Stream Read Speed Test = 4255ms
Stream Write Speed Test = 598ms
STIC Benchmarks D6.1 under Vision-VM
Times in milliseconds (lower is better)
Towers Of Hanoi = 360.105ms
Alloc Speed Test = 347ms
Array Write Speed Test = 944ms
Dictionary Write Speed Test = 261ms
Floating Math Speed Test = 2763ms
Integer Math Speed Test = 338ms
Ordered Collection Iterate Speed Test = 2844ms
Ordered Collection Write Speed Test = 397ms
String Compare Speed Test 1 = 5219ms *
String Compare Speed Test 2 = 5359ms
Fixed Point Math Speed Test = 21353ms
Polymorphism Speed Test = 1526ms
Stream Read Speed Test = 1163ms
Stream Write Speed Test = 549ms
* Note, Dolphin X6 optimizes the "String Compare Test 1" to a no-op, hence the poor comparison for this test.
We hope to update this page in the future with additional screenshots and information. Please pop back to see how Dolphin NG is progressing.