[Haskell-cafe] Re: GHC predictability

[Don Stewart]

> I offer up the following example:
>
>  mean xs = sum xs / length xs
>
> Now try, say, "mean [1.. 1e9]", and watch GHC eat several GB of RAM. (!!)

But you know why, don't you?

>  sat down and spent the best part of a day writing an MD5 
> implementation. Eventually I got it so that all the test vectors work 
> right. (Stupid little-endian nonsense... mutter mutter...) When I tried 
> it on a file containing more than 1 MB of data... ooooohhhh dear...

Did you use Data.Binary or the other libraries for efficient access to gigabytes of data?

> Of course, the first step in any serious attempt at performance improvement
> is to actually profile the code to figure out where the time 
> is being spent. 

Well, actually, for our 'mean()' case, it means just using the right structures.
Arrays for example:

    import Data.Array.Vector
    import Text.Printf

    mean :: UArr Double -> Double
    mean arr = b / fromIntegral a
      where
        k (n :*: s) a = n+1 :*: s+a
        a :*: b = foldlU k (0 :*: 0) arr :: (Int :*: Double)

    main = printf "%f\n" . mean $ enumFromToFracU 1 1e9

For example,

    $ time ./A
    5.00000000067109e8
    ./A  3.53s user 0.00s system 99% cpu 3.532 total

Try allocating an array of doubles in C, and getting similar results.
(The compiler is optimising this to:

    Main_zdszdwfold_info:
      leaq        32(%r12), %rax
      cmpq        %r15, %rax
      movq        %rax, %r12
      ja  .L10
      movsd       .LC0(%rip), %xmm0
      ucomisd     %xmm5, %xmm0
      jae .L12
      movq        %rsi, (%rax)
      movq        $base_GHCziFloat_Dzh_con_info, -24(%rax)
      movsd       %xmm6, -16(%rax)
      movq        $base_GHCziBase_Izh_con_info, -8(%rax)
      leaq        -7(%rax), %rbx
      leaq        -23(%rax), %rsi
      jmp *(%rbp)
    .L12:
      movapd      %xmm6, %xmm0
      addq        $1, %rsi
      subq        $32, %r12
      addsd       %xmm5, %xmm0
      addsd       .LC2(%rip), %xmm5
      movapd      %xmm0, %xmm6
      jmp Main_zdszdwfold_info

Note even any garbage collection. This should be pretty much the same
performance-wise as unoptimised C.

> almost any nontrivial program you write 
> spends 60% or more of its time doing GC rather than actual work. 

Ok, you're doing something very wrong. GC time is typically less than 15% of the running
time of typical work programs I hack on.

I bet you're using lists inappropriately?

> I find it completely impossibly to write code that doesn't crawl along at a
> snail's pace.  Even when I manage to make it faster, I usually have no clue
> why.

I think there is a problem that few people are taking the time to understand
the compilation model of Haskell, while they've had the C runtime behaviour
drilled into their brains since college.

Until you sit down and understand what your Haskell code means, it will be very
hard to reason about optimisations, unfortunately.

GHC does what it does well, and its predictable. As long as you understand 
the operations your trying to make predictions about.

I suggest installing ghc-core, and looking at how your code is compiled.
Try many examples, and have a good knowledge of the STG paper.

-- Don