[jhc] Optimization.

[John Meacham]

On Sat, Feb 16, 2008 at 12:52:30AM +0100, Lemmih wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 16, 2008 at 12:45 AM, John Meacham <john at repetae.net> wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 15, 2008 at 03:34:59PM +0100, Lemmih wrote:
> >
> >
> > > The attached patch is a two-step optimization:
> >  >  1) Only call 'getType' 100,000,000 times instead of 600,000,000 times.
> >  >  2) Greatly simplify the actual loop.
> >  >
> >  > Without this patch, compiling base-1.0.hl takes 19 minutes. With this
> >  > patch, compile time is down to 11 minutes.
> >  > Feedback would be greatly appreciated.
> >
> >  I am confused, what in the patch causes getType to be called less? As
> >  far as I can tell it is just replacing equality checks with 'isFoo'
> >  predicates.
> 
> E.Values.isCheap checks whether its argument is atomic. The 'isAtomic'
> function is very expensive so I moved it down below the four static
> checks.

Ah, I see now. cool. there are probably other ones in there that can be
moved around to improve speed. isAtomic was very cheap once upon a
time.. but now the isFullyConst was added... 

It _may_ be possible to have isFullyConst only look one layer deep,
since an invariant that is supposed to hold is that a constructor can
only hold atomic arguments, hence any Literals under another one must be
fully constant.

However, I am not sure if that invarient is rigidly enforced through all
compilation phases. like, there is a progression of transformations
through normal forms, each one more strict than the last... hmm...

perhaps a way to test would be for isAtomic only look a single layer
deep but isFullyConst will do a full check. and isAtomic can do a
'isFullyConst' check only when -flint mode is enabled. We will probably
have to go thorugh and change some isAtomics to isFullyConst depending
on whether the code is known to be in normal form beforehand or not.

        John

-- 
John Meacham - ⑆repetae.net⑆john⑈