Again: Uniques in GHC

[Austin Seipp]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 11:26 AM,  <p.k.f.holzenspies at utwente.nl> wrote:
> Wait, wait, wait! I wasn't talking about a parallel *runtime*. Nothing changes there. All I'm talking about is something that is a very old issue that never got added / solved / resolved. Somewhere on the commentary, or the mailing list, I seem to recall that the generation of Uniques was the bottleneck for the parallelisation of GHC *Itself*. It's about having a compiler using multiple threads and says nothing about programs coming out of it.

OK, cool. Just making sure. :)

> I'm all with you on embedded processors and that kind of stuff, but I don't see a pressing need to compile *on* them. Isn't all ARM-stuff assuming cross-compilation?

No, not all ARM builds assume cross compilation. In fact, if you want
a fully working GHC, cross compilation is impossible: you cannot cross
compile GHCi, meaning you can't use Template Haskell (as well as some
of the linker features, I believe). However, I don't think this change
impacts building GHC at all, since we get parallelism through 'make',
not through GHC itself (and on low-end systems, parallelism in the
build system is crucial and really necessary.)

So I assume your change would mean 'ghc -j' would not work for 32bit.
I still consider this a big limitation, one which is only due to an
implementation detail. But we need to confirm this will actually fix
any bottlenecks first though before getting to that point.

> Ph.
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: mad.one at gmail.com <mad.one at gmail.com> on behalf of Austin Seipp <austin at well-typed.com>
> Sent: 07 October 2014 17:46
> To: Holzenspies, P.K.F. (EWI)
> Cc: ghc-devs at haskell.org
> Subject: Re: Again: Uniques in GHC
>
> On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 1:32 AM,  <p.k.f.holzenspies at utwente.nl> wrote:
>> Yes, this approach to a parallel GHC would only work on 64-bit machines. The
>> idea is, I guess, that we're not going to see a massive demand for parallel
>> GHC running on multi-core 32-bit systems. In other words; 32-bit systems
>> wouldn't get a parallel GHC.
>
> Let me make sure I'm understanding this correctly: in this particular
> proposed solution, the side effect would be that we no longer have a
> capable 32bit runtime which supports multicore parallelism?
>
> Sorry, but I'm afraid this approach is pretty much unacceptable IMO,
> for precisely the reason outlined in your last sentence. 32bit systems
> are surprisingly commen. I have several multicore 32bit ARMv7 machines
> on my desk right now, for example. And there are a lot more of those
> floating around than you might think.
>
> If that's the 'cure', I think I (and other users) would consider it
> far worse than the disease.
>
>> Regards,
>> Philip
>>
>>
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>>
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant
> Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/
>



-- 
Regards,

Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant
Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/