Re: [Caml-list] Optimizing symbolic processing code

[Kuba Ober <ober.14@osu.edu>]

On Jan 16, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Hugo Ferreira wrote:

> Peter Ilberg wrote:
>> On Friday 16 January 2009 08:42:52 Hugo Ferreira wrote:
>>> I have implemented a simple Prolog like inference engine
>>> to be used in machine learning algorithms (ILP). My first
>>> basic test shows that inference is dismally slow (compared
>>> to a Prolog compiler).
>>> Consequently I am looking for information on optimizing the code.
>> For implementing a Prolog-like language, you might want to look at
>> this book on the Warren Abstract Machine:
>> http://web.archive.org/web/20030213072337/http://www.vanx.org/archive/wam/wam.html
>
> Ok, new of this document. But I think this demands too-much effort.

What you expect, basically, is for OCaml to magically translate your
likely cobbled-together, slowly performing interpreter into a bytecode
compiler and a VM.

That ain't happening, and it's not OCaml's fault. Try compiling your  
code
in F# and see how fast it runs - I doubt you'll see an improvement of
more than an order of magnitude, unless you're really unlucky to hit
some OCaml's deficiencies. I doubt that SWI Prolog would be
substantially (as in more than an order of magnitude linear constant)  
slower
if it were ported to OCaml.

Writing a well-performing Prolog system is not an overnight task, at  
least
not without using some decent compiler/system building libraries, which
may not even exist.

Cheers, Kuba