[userbinator]

Not surprising. Register-based machines in general have higher performance than stack-based machines, because the register set can be addressed randomly like RAM whereas in a 'strict' stack machine this isn't possible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stack_machine#Performance_disa...

Of course the advantages such as easy code generation and high code density make stack machines a good intermediate compilation target, which then gets compiled to a register machine for actual execution.

[bogomipz]

>"Of course the advantages such as easy code generation and high code density make stack machines a good intermediate compilation target, which then gets compiled to a register machine for actual execution"

Are you referring to a specific language here or are you saying all register machine always compile to stack machines first?

[userbinator]

In general they do. The JVM and .NET CLR being the most prominent examples.