[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] ANNOUNCE: jhc 0.7.4

[Simon Marlow]

On 27/07/2010 01:54, John Meacham wrote:

> For each type I can statically generate an "optimal" layout based on its
> structure. For instance, maybe benefits from two of these optimizations,
> first of all, nullary constructors (Nothing) need never appear in the
> heap, so they are given values that pack directly into a word, this
> happens for all nullay constructors in general. Then, since there is
> only one constructor left (Just) we can discard the tag field, because
> if something of type Maybe, is in WHNF, and is not Nothing then in must be
> a Just. so the Just is a single heap allocated word (which are packed
> end to end in a page with no overhead)
>
> I am refining the optimization algorithm, on 64 bit machines I have
> another few bits to play with for instance that I can take advantage of.
>
> A particularly nice case is that characters can be fully integreated
> into the word, so the entire space usage of
>
> "Hello" is 10 words as lists benefit from the same packing benefits as
> Maybe.

I should point out that in GHC "Hello" requires 15 words: 3 for each 
list cell, and the Chars are free because they're statically allocated 
in the RTS.

A Just requires 2 words (one more than JHC, I guess).  Tantalisingly, 
it's almost possible to represent a Just with zero words - the pointer 
to the Just points directly to the element - but there's nowhere to put 
the tag bits for the element pointer (the tag bits are for the Just).  A 
Nothing in GHC takes zero words, as do all nullary constructors.

I wrote up a summary of the GHC heap representation on Stack Overflow 
recently:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3254758/memory-footprint-of-haskell-data-types/3256825#3256825

Cheers,
	Simon


> compare this to 30 or so words used in a traditional "everything is on
> the heap and tagged" model.
>
>
> The manual has a section describing the RTS, it doesn't describe the GC
> though, but talks about how I pack things in the pointers.
>
> http://repetae.net/computer/jhc/manual.html#the-run-time-system
>
>          John
>