[Haskell-cafe] Re: Functional programming for processing of large raster images

[minh thu]

Thanks for pointing this out, although I knew that kind of answer via
papers about Pan.
It means I'll have to improve my compiler writing knowlegde :)
mt

2006/6/21, oleg at pobox.com <oleg at pobox.com>:
>
> Recently Vo Minh Thu wondered if Haskell (or, I generalize, functional
> programming) can be of much use for computer graphics programming.
>
> I'd like to point out a project that experimentally shown that
> functional programming is of great help for processing of large raster
> images (24-bit PPM files). The paper describing the system has been
> accepted for `Science of Computer Programming' and is in press:
>
>  Combining Partial Evaluation and Staged Interpretation in the
>  Implementation of Domain-Specific Languages
>  Christoph A. Herrmann, Tobias Langhammer
>
> The code for the system is available online
>  http://infosun.fmi.uni-passau.de/cl/metaprog/imagefilter2-2005-10-30.tgz
>
> The previous [slightly obsolete] version of the paper,
> presented at the MetaOCaml'04 workshop, is available online
>        http://www.fmi.uni-passau.de/forschung/mip-berichte/MIP-0410.html
>
> The paper includes a few pictures and the table with benchmark, so we
> can observe the benefits. Now, with offshoring and native MetaOCaml
> fully implemented, we can gain bigger benefits.
>
> In this project, functional programming does what it is probably best
> suited: to develop a `compiler' -- a compiler from a filter
> specification to quite efficient code. The code is specialized to all
> available static information. To be precise, the authors implement an
> interpreter -- which is then specialized to the source program and so
> interpretative overhead is removed and the code is optimized. Staging
> an interpreter automatically gives a compiler. Futamura projections
> are not only the fascinating, but useful, too.
>
>