The question whether it is possible to make Ruby faster is very close to how fast can we make other similar languages. If we can make a system run Smalltalk much faster than the same system can run the best Ruby implementation, we know something in the Ruby implementation is very wrong.

Every language in this league solves very similar problems. It's the techniques people use to solve them that make the difference in performance.

While not as good as directly comparing different Ruby implementations, the results of comparing similar languages lend some credibility to the Maglev claims.