Improvements over time

  rakudo-2012.01
  + more native type support 
  + bounded serialization (2012.03)     
  + refactored MapIter (2012.06)
  + longest token matching (2012.05, 2012.06)
  + replace Parrot's RPA type (2012.06)
  rakudo-2012.06
  
  
  

Results (seconds):

              2011.01  2011.07  2012.01  2012.06  

while 0..^N    23.04    14.43     2.24     1.63  
for 0..^N      34.93    26.90     1.43     1.09  
startup         0.62     0.59     0.12     0.09