[GHC] #8703: Use guard pages rather than heap checks

[GHC]

#8703: Use guard pages rather than heap checks
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       Reporter:  schyler           |             Owner:  simonmar
           Type:  feature request   |            Status:  new
       Priority:  normal            |         Milestone:
      Component:  Runtime System    |           Version:
       Keywords:                    |  Operating System:  Unknown/Multiple
   Architecture:  Unknown/Multiple  |   Type of failure:  None/Unknown
     Difficulty:  Unknown           |         Test Case:
     Blocked By:                    |          Blocking:
Related Tickets:                    |
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 By mmap'ing memory using MAP_ANONYMOUS (or /dev/zero) as PROT_NONE
 (Windows has an equivalent functionality with VirtualAlloc), it's possible
 to create a page that will fault when read or written to. It may be
 possible to remove the heap checks in the runtime, speeding up
 allocations, and instead expand the heap when a fault is raised.

 This is likely cheaper for large pages full of many small allocations than
 the cost of the heap checking branch.

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Ticket URL: <http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8703>
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