From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id JAA02810; Wed, 31 Oct 2001 09:49:31 +0100 (MET) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id JAA03493 for ; Wed, 31 Oct 2001 09:49:30 +0100 (MET) Received: from lachesis.inria.fr (lachesis.inria.fr [128.93.52.5]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f9V8nS115423; Wed, 31 Oct 2001 09:49:28 +0100 (MET) Received: (from lefessan@localhost) by lachesis.inria.fr (8.11.3/8.11.3) id f9V7oUs02812; Wed, 31 Oct 2001 08:50:30 +0100 X-Authentication-Warning: lachesis.inria.fr: lefessan set sender to fabrice.le_fessant@inria.fr using -f From: Fabrice Le Fessant MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15327.44357.213918.877416@lachesis.inria.fr> Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 08:50:29 +0100 (CET) To: Chris Hecker Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] native code optimization priorities References: <4.3.2.7.2.20011030174718.02888870@arda.pair.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under Emacs 20.7.1 Reply-To: fabrice.le_fessant@inria.fr Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk I'm not part of the Ocaml devel team, but as an "old" ocaml user, I would reply: > 0. How important is optimization to the team? > 2. What's the relative priority of new features versus compiler > optimizations? Optimizations are welcome, if they don't complexify too much the compiler. > 3. Is there some kind of standard suite of test applications the > 3. caml team runs to figure out whether an optimization is worth > 3. it to include? Look at the CVS version of ocaml, there are test directories I think. Coq compilation is often used for evaluating optimizations. > 4. Are numerical operations an important area for ocaml to > 4. succeed? Put another way, if an optimization helps numerical > 4. code but does not help other code (or even slightly hurts it), > 4. how would that patch be received? What about command line > 4. options for optimization (of which there very few now) to > 4. offset this affect? Most current users look more interested in "symbolic" computations, than in "numerical" applications. However, this might change if you add such an optimization patch. But, if your patch degrades "symbolic" performances, you MUST ADD AN OPTION to trigger it ONLY on numerical applications. Notice that, as discussed before on this mailing-list, I would welcome such a patch in the CDK. > 5. How does the team feel about optimizations added to the x86 > 5. code generator that don't help other platforms? x86 optimization is better than nothing. Finally, I would say it might be interesting to have an optional pass in the compiler, where user-contributed optimizations might be added. Then, there would be some space for an independant project, something like ocaml-opts.sourceforge.net that would develop this pass. Regards, -- Fabrice ------------------- Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr