Remove the IND_OLDGEN and IND_OLDGEN_PERM closure types These are no longer used: once upon a time they used to have different layout from IND and IND_PERM respectively, but that is no longer the case since we changed the remembered set to be an array of addresses instead of a linked list of closures.
New implementation of BLACKHOLEs This replaces the global blackhole_queue with a clever scheme that enables us to queue up blocked threads on the closure that they are blocked on, while still avoiding atomic instructions in the common case. Advantages: - gets rid of a locked global data structure and some tricky GC code (replacing it with some per-thread data structures and different tricky GC code :) - wakeups are more prompt: parallel/concurrent performance should benefit. I haven't seen anything dramatic in the parallel benchmarks so far, but a couple of threading benchmarks do improve a bit. - waking up a thread blocked on a blackhole is now O(1) (e.g. if it is the target of throwTo). - less sharing and better separation of Capabilities: communication is done with messages, the data structures are strictly owned by a Capability and cannot be modified except by sending messages. - this change will utlimately enable us to do more intelligent scheduling when threads block on each other. This is what started off the whole thing, but it isn't done yet (#3838). I'll be documenting all this on the wiki in due course.
RTS tidyup sweep, first phase The first phase of this tidyup is focussed on the header files, and in particular making sure we are exposinng publicly exactly what we need to, and no more. - Rts.h now includes everything that the RTS exposes publicly, rather than a random subset of it. - Most of the public header files have moved into subdirectories, and many of them have been renamed. But clients should not need to include any of the other headers directly, just #include the main public headers: Rts.h, HsFFI.h, RtsAPI.h. - All the headers needed for via-C compilation have moved into the stg subdirectory, which is self-contained. Most of the headers for the rest of the RTS APIs have moved into the rts subdirectory. - I left MachDeps.h where it is, because it is so widely used in Haskell code. - I left a deprecated stub for RtsFlags.h in place. The flag structures are now exposed by Rts.h. - Various internal APIs are no longer exposed by public header files. - Various bits of dead code and declarations have been removed - More gcc warnings are turned on, and the RTS code is more warning-clean. - More source files #include "PosixSource.h", and hence only use standard POSIX (1003.1c-1995) interfaces. There is a lot more tidying up still to do, this is just the first pass. I also intend to standardise the names for external RTS APIs (e.g use the rts_ prefix consistently), and declare the internal APIs as hidden for shared libraries.
Add a header to all build system files: # ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- # # (c) 2009 The University of Glasgow # # This file is part of the GHC build system. # # To understand how the build system works and how to modify it, see # http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Architecture # http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Modifying # # -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Merging in the new codegen branch This merge does not turn on the new codegen (which only compiles a select few programs at this point), but it does introduce some changes to the old code generator. The high bits: 1. The Rep Swamp patch is finally here. The highlight is that the representation of types at the machine level has changed. Consequently, this patch contains updates across several back ends. 2. The new Stg -> Cmm path is here, although it appears to have a fair number of bugs lurking. 3. Many improvements along the CmmCPSZ path, including: o stack layout o some code for infotables, half of which is right and half wrong o proc-point splitting
Add optional eager black-holing, with new flag -feager-blackholing Eager blackholing can improve parallel performance by reducing the chances that two threads perform the same computation. However, it has a cost: one extra memory write per thunk entry. To get the best results, any code which may be executed in parallel should be compiled with eager blackholing turned on. But since there's a cost for sequential code, we make it optional and turn it on for the parallel package only. It might be a good idea to compile applications (or modules) with parallel code in with -feager-blackholing. ToDo: document -feager-blackholing.
Pointer Tagging This patch implements pointer tagging as per our ICFP'07 paper "Faster laziness using dynamic pointer tagging". It improves performance by 10-15% for most workloads, including GHC itself. The original patches were by Alexey Rodriguez Yakushev <mrchebas@gmail.com>, with additions and improvements by me. I've re-recorded the development as a single patch. The basic idea is this: we use the low 2 bits of a pointer to a heap object (3 bits on a 64-bit architecture) to encode some information about the object pointed to. For a constructor, we encode the "tag" of the constructor (e.g. True vs. False), for a function closure its arity. This enables some decisions to be made without dereferencing the pointer, which speeds up some common operations. In particular it enables us to avoid costly indirect jumps in many cases. More information in the commentary: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Commentary/Rts/HaskellExecution/PointerTagging