New libraries process

[Ryan Newton]

Chris, Daniel, it looks like you both volunteered in this thread to be the
"random" maintainer.  Whoever it ends up being --  if you would like any
backup I'd be happy to be listed as a co-maintainer.  I have some interest
in the topic because I was doing a bit of work recently on splittable RNG.

By the way, what is the feeling about using the FFI and foreign code in core
libraries' implementations (aside from unix)?  The reason I ask is that it
would be nice to fix the statistical weakness in System.Random.split and I
think the best way to do it is:

   - (1) use a cryptographic RNG technique
   - (2) use native code and possibly HW acceleration to make up for the
   performance hit in (1)

I did a prototype of this in http://hackage.haskell.org/package/intel-aes,
and it seemed to have the potential to make a decent stdGen.  First, this is
because on the hardware I tested there was no performance regression
relative to System.Random -- the portable, C, AES-based implementation
performs a little better than the pure Haskell System.Random.  Second, newer
Intel and AMD machines have AESNI, which at least doubles the performance
over the portable software version.

So it's a win for both performance and correctness; BUT there's more work to
ensure portability across hardware and across Haskell implementations -- so
does that tradeoff have any chance for a Core library?

  -Ryan


On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 4:14 AM, Chris Dornan <chris at chrisdornan.com> wrote:

> Congrats on the award by the way – you have been winning my own superhero
> award but it’s cool to see some objective recognition.
>
>
>
> I had volunteered for random (and anything else you needed) – I thought you
> were being diplomatic (and maybe you were).
>
>
>
> Just made the major delivery on my contract so definitely feeling like some
> good works are in order…
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
> Chris
>
>
>
> *From:* libraries-bounces at haskell.org [mailto:
> libraries-bounces at haskell.org] *On Behalf Of *Simon Peyton-Jones
> *Sent:* 07 June 2011 10:43 PM
> *To:* Haskell Libraries
> *Cc:* Simon Peyton-Jones
> *Subject:* New libraries process
>
>
>
> Friends
>
> Last month Simon M and I put forward a proposal to revise the process for
> developing the Core Haskell libraries:
>         http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library_submissions/NewDraft
>
> There was some discussion, leading to improvements now incorporated in the
> draft, but I believe that there was general support; indeed no one opposed
> the change.
>
> Several weeks have gone by, so I suggest that we adopt the new process
> forthwith.  Unless I hear otherwise I'll replace
>         http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Library_submissions
> with the new process in a day or two.
>
> We still need volunteers to become the maintainer of
>         mtl
>         random [though I think someone maybe did volunteer, Daniel
> perhaps?]
>         Win32
> Please!
>
> best wishes
>
> Simon
>
>
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