The Erlang VM tends to shine when it is given situations with an enormous amount of load and a high level of concurrency. None of the "ShootOut" problems really

The Erlang VM tends to shine when it is given situations with an enormous amount of load and a high level of concurrency. None of the "ShootOut" problems really reflect where the time is spent optimizing the Erlang VM, so it is not that much of a mirror. The BEAM interpreter is an interpreter though. And while it is rather fast, it is still just an interpreter and for purely CPU-bound problems, you have many languages, most compiled, that will beat it soundly.