Re: [Caml-list] Inline assembly?

[Xavier Leroy <Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr>]

> Is it possible to use inline assembly in ocaml?

Currently, no.  A gcc-style inline asm facility could be useful to
express some canned instruction sequences that are currently hardcoded
into each native-code generator, but that's also quite a lot of work
to implement properly.

> If not, what is the lowest overhead way to approximate
> it? Using a C function which includes the asm?

Yes.  Since the C function will not heap-allocate nor raise
exceptions, you can tell the compiler about it using the "noalloc"
annotation:

        external myfunction : ... = "myfunction" "noalloc"

and this will select a faster calling convention from Caml to C for
this function.  If the function operates over floats, there are other
performance tricks one can play; write me if this is the case.

Regards,

- Xavier Leroy
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