New Runtime Lays Groundwork to Accelerate Performance Characteristics of Ruby Applications Up to 20x
SAN FRANCISCO, June 9, 2010 – Engine Yard, the leading cloud computing platform for Ruby on Rails, today announced the general availability of Rubinius, a new language runtime for the Ruby language written in Ruby and C++. The runtime was created to provide a faster, high-performance environment for running Ruby code, so the Ruby language can be used for more applications by more developers. Engine Yard is the proud sponsor of the Rubinius open source project.
“Rubinius provides a number of great capabilities to Ruby that previously were only available to languages such as Java,” said Evan Phoenix, founder of the Rubinius project and an engineer at Engine Yard. “Developers can expect Rubinius to deliver modern language interpretation techniques and a number of very significant performance benefits for Ruby applications.”
Improving language performance is important for any programming language because the speed with which code can be executed impacts the amount of hardware required to run an application. Users benefit from these improvements because the faster an application runs the less hardware it requires.
The release of Rubinius 1.0 is a major milestone in reaching compatibility with Ruby 1.8.7 because it sets the stage for continued performance improvements and new feature development in future releases. Key Rubinius 1.0 features include:
- Increased performance for Ruby code – Adaptive Just-In-Time compiler can accelerate Ruby code by up to 20x in some areas
- Modern memory management techniques – Reduces overall memory footprint of large applications
- Flexible architecture – Enables rapid development of new features
Today, the dominant Ruby runtime, MRI, is written in C. By contrast, Rubinius is written in Ruby and C++ and is fully compatible with existing Ruby implementations to ensure backwards compatibility regardless of the runtime a developer uses. Rubinius achieved this compatibility by leveraging RubySpec, an Engine Yard project that defined the first standard use of the Ruby language.
“Rubinius is a prime example of why Engine Yard invests in open source projects that are important to the development of the Ruby and Rails communities,” said Jon Crosby, Engineering Manager, Engine Yard. “Rubinius brings so many modern techniques and an improved runtime to Ruby; this truly demonstrates the maturation of Ruby as a language and a platform.”
Engine Yard delivers Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud products that remove the drag of managing technology infrastructure and reduce application deployment and management expenses. This allows developers who use Engine Yard products for their Rails-based applications to focus on building great applications. With full-time contributors to Ruby, Rails, JRuby and Rubinius – Engine Yard offers developers and businesses unmatched expertise for managing and deploying Ruby applications in the cloud.
Rubinius can be downloaded today at http://rubini.us/download
To learn more about Rubinius, join Evan Phoenix, Rubinius Architect, on Tuesday, June 29th at 10:00 a.m. for a technical discussion about using Rubinius 1.0. Evan will talk about the 1.0 release, including performance, tips, and tricks, as well as new features that will be in Rubinius 1.1. To register for the webinar, please click here.
About Engine Yard
Engine Yard is the leading provider of automation technologies and services for Ruby on Rails, including the Engine Yard Cloud, a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for web developers and web teams. It provides easy-to-use, automated Rails application deployment and management, with a design philosophy that allows easy migration of existing applications. Engine Yard helps development teams realize productivity gains and cost savings by eliminating the operational overhead caused by application deployment issues and managing complex infrastructures. A significant contributor to the advancement of Open Source projects, Engine Yard employs top industry experts and sponsors or directly contributes to many projects such as Ruby on Rails, JRuby and Rubinius Headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., Engine Yard is backed by Benchmark Capital, New Enterprise Associates, and Amazon.com.
Media Contact
Sabrina Cook Horn Group for Engine Yard sabrina.cook@horngroup.com 415.905.4013
