Replacement for GMP: Update

[Peter Tanski]

> Remember that the memory-allocation mechanism is crucial.  How does BN
> do that?

BN uses a structure called "CTX"--OpenSSL calls all such structures  
"CTX"--to hold the local static variables for reentrancy.  CTX  
structures do not affect memory allocation, though they *do* require  
malloc'd memory. For my purposes, the BN-CTX structure does give me  
an easy way to handle thread local storage.  Otherwise, BN uses  
standard malloc'd memory.  Creating a BN-MP (called a BIGNUM; really  
a struct), you either do:

	BIGNUM x;
	BN_init(&x);	// defined in bn_lib.c; uses memset

	or,

	// uses OpenSSL-named checked malloc:
	// OPENSSL_malloc == CRYPTO_malloc
	BIGNUM* y = BN_new();	

It would be easy to change the definition of OPENSSL_malloc to call  
RTS-memory as necessary.  It would be more efficient for BN to be  
garbage collected (these bignum libraries allocate and delete a lot  
of small memory blocks (~1-2KB for large integers)).  Since  
ForeignPtr is simply too slow I am bringing BN value allocations into  
the rts as close as possible to how you did it with GMP.


> Making a single word contain either a pointer or a non-pointer
> (depending on the setting of some bit) would have some quite global
> implications, as would losing 32 bit precision from Int#.  I suggest
> that you do not couple these two projects together!  Do the GMP thing
> first, then investigate this later.  We have quite a few bit-twidding
> ideas that we have never followed up.

The original idea was to create a specialized Int30# for that  
purpose.  In any case implementing it would certainly make my  
intended job--getting this done in time for the next release--a bit  
more difficult.

Best regards,
Peter