Does the introduction of integers slow the interpreter so much (it
is the only architectural change I know of that could possibly
affect so much the tests)? Since I got some compilation warnings
(see another subthread) I tried to recompile with different TDM-GCC
versions, but to no avail: lua 5.3 is a crawl compared to the
previous versions.
The use of 64-bit integers in 32-bit architectures may slow down the
interpreter a little bit, for some programs, but nothing close to what
you are relating. A difference from a couple of seconds to 3 minutes
is completely unexpected. (In my machine, the worst cases are in the
order of 10~20%, with several programs being not affected or running
even faster.)
