[Haskell-cafe] Tweaking the garbage collector for realtime usage

[Don Stewart]

bugfact:
> The GHC documentation lists a lot of tweaks that can be done to the garbage
> collector.
> 
> However, Haskell spin-offs like Timber implement their own incremental garbage
> collector that is better suitable for real-time usage.
> 
> Did someone already fiddle with GHC's gc flags so it works better for real-time
> applications, like games and simulations?

Galois uses GHC's rts for things that have to have low latency. Useful
tweaks include:

    * setting the heap size high
    * using the threaded runtime system
    * messing with the scheduler tick rate
    * patching the rts to avoid slow bits (like deadlock detection)

I think since games and simulations aren't strictly "real time" you
should be ok.

-- Don