CellularAutomaton function speed

[rjgaylord (Richard Gaylord)]

has anyone done a speed comparion of Gosper’s Golly program/app (http://golly.sourceforge.net) and the CellularAutomaton function? it would be interesting because e.g. the Game of Life program implemented in CellularAutomaton function (http://www.wolfram.com/language/gallery/implement-conways-game-of-life/) is very fast - much faster than the 3 versions i wrote in the final section of my turorial notes set (Wolfram Language Fundamentals -- from Wolfram Library Archive)/) which surprised me becuase in one of those programs i made direct use of all of the 512 update rules which i expectedd to be quite fast since it directly uses the rule-based, pattern-matching nature of WL). if anyone knows of, or can do, a speed omparision, i’d like to know the results (you’ll need to look at the effect of both the grid size and the number of time steps - and possibly the initial number of empty (i.e. dead) sites as well - because the relative speed of execution of the various programs can change as a function of these parameter values..