Re: [Caml-list] [Was: OCamlJit 2.0]

[Benedikt Meurer <benedikt.meurer@googlemail.com>]

On Nov 20, 2010, at 16:19 , Vincent Balat wrote:

> On Nov 19, 2010 21:20:01, Yoann Padioleau wrote:
>> On Nov 19, 2010, at 11:46 AM, Dario Teixeira wrote:
> ...
>>> Actually, Facebook has a compiler that transforms PHP source code into
>>> C++ [1], and they claim a 50% reduction in CPU usage.
>> 
>> Yes, which is good. But if you think about it is "only" a x2 speedup vs a
>> really slow bytecode interpreter (the Zend PHP interpreter). PHP is known
>> for being more than 30 times slower than C.
>> It's even slower than Ruby on
>> http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programming-languages-are-fast
>> est.php There are lots of opportunities to do better IMHO.
> 
> Would it be completely inconceivable for a company like facebook to 
> reimplement everything using a fast well designed typed language
> instead of "spending hundreds of millions of dollars on machines that run PHP 
> bytecode interpreters"? (quoting Yoann)

It's probably not a technical decision, but more likely a marketing decision. If you tell Joe that your webservices run on Java, PHP or .NET, he'll say "great", "sure" or "wow" (not because Joe's familiar with the technology or the theory, but because he's familiar with the terms). Tell Joe your webservices run on OCaml or Haskell and the best answer you can get will be "what?".

> Vincent [not completely joking]

Benedikt