> a lot more effort into numerics and string processing and a lot less
effort into
symbolics
Is there any fundamental reason these two goals must be at odds? Why can't a
compiler be good at numeric and symbolic computation?


On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 4:59 AM, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday 23 December 2008 06:07:37 Jon Harrop wrote:
> > Yes. I'll do a bit more work on it and then tidy it up and document it
> > before uploading it, unless there is any great interest from people now.
>
> Incidentally, I would like to know what performance issues (good and bad)
> people have with the current OCaml implementation?
>
> AFAICT, OCaml evolved from a family of languages that were only optimized
> for
> symbolic processing. Some of OCaml's relatives, like PolyML, were able to
> provide even faster symbolic processing than naive C but their numerical
> performance is 100x worse. These heavily-skewed performance characteristics
> rendered many ML implementations domain specific.
>
> I believe OCaml was the first ML to put an unusual amount of effort into
> optimizing other aspects, most notably high performance floating-point
> arithmetic and float arrays (where OCaml still thrashes SML/NJ and MLton).
> Moreover, I think OCaml became the world's favourite ML precisely because
> of
> this diversity.
>
> I am just looking at the simplest possible GC implementations, like shadow
> stack, and trying to envisage an ML implementation that puts a lot more
> effort into numerics and string processing and a lot less effort into
> symbolics. I am guessing the performance of allocation will be degraded
> 10-100x but many allocations can be removed. This leaves me wondering how
> much slowdown is acceptable without deterring a lot of users?
>
> Anyway, I'll try to implement a simple GC and get some concrete performance
> results first...
>
> --
> Dr Jon Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
> http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?e
>
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