Re: [Caml-list] report describing optimization of numerical computing of the ocaml compiler.

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@best.com>]

On Thu, 31 May 2001, Peter Ronnquist wrote:
> This report describes adjustments of the ocaml
> compiler to support better optimization of arrays for
> numerical computing.
> 
> http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/cs612/2001SP/projects/ocaml-arrays/OCaml.pdf
> 
> Is this something that is considered to be included in
> future versions of ocaml?

Wow, the paper is dated May 7, 2001 and you already want to know if it is 
going to be in a future version. At this rate, INRIA will need a time
machine to peer into the future for developments!

Seriously, I remember reading that the implementors are looking a lot more
at making OCaml a better vehicle for scientific computing, so I suppose we 
can expect more in the future. I've been looking a little bit at SAC
lately (http://www.informatik.uni-kiel.de/~sacbase/), it is a strict
language based on C with some high level array constructs. It's very
interesting, and maybe when I get some more free time I'll hack up a 
SAC like interface to Bigarrays using P4. Yes, I know that the efficiency 
will not be good since SAC relies on optimizations of its "with-loop" 
construct to match C/Fortran performance, but the experiment would be to 
determine how comfortable SAC-in-OCaml really is. 

I think it's great that all of these scientific computing folks are coming
to Caml, as this will really strengthen the community by adding a new set 
of perspectives. When I was in gradual school it seemed that the numerics 
folks and the language theory folks didn't communicate, and that was a
shame. OCaml should be the premier scientific computing language in addition
to being the premier symbolic processing language!

-- Brian


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