hootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=bigforth&lang2=gcc"
>pretty decent performance</a> in my experience, really, much
better than the <a
href="http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4sandbox/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=gforth&lang2=gcc"
>gFORTH threaded-code interpreter</a>.  But it looks like most of the
bigFORTH primitives simply inline fixed instruction sequences, and no
register 
allocation is done.  I figured I could glue together fixed instruction
sequences too.
</p>

<p>Once I got 