[gambit-list] Poor compilation of do-loops

Taylor R Campbell campbell at mumble.net
Thu Oct 15 12:49:15 EDT 2009


   Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:28:35 -0400
   From: Taylor R Campbell <campbell at mumble.net>

      Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:22:37 -0400
      From: Bradley Lucier <lucier at math.purdue.edu>

      In other words, this mechanical translation of do loops to named lets
      (following the known continuation when each loop is finished) more than
      doubles the speed of the routine.

      I've trained myself to write loops as named lets, but other people have
      not yet been assimilated to modify how they write code to get around the
      oddities of Gambit's compiler.  Do loops are very popular in numerical
      code; please add a transformation like this to the compiler.

   I'm puzzled: how is DO implemented in Gambit, if not as a macro that
   performs precisely that transformation?

I see: Gambit is probably transforming DO the obvious way, to yield

...
(let k-loop ((k 0))
  (if (fx= k nr2)
      (matrix-set! r i j a)
      ...))
(j-loop (fx+ j 1))
...

But Gambit is not performing the control flow analysis necessary to
observe that the continuation of the initial call to K-LOOP -- the
continuation which calls J-LOOP -- will be used only once, and can be
integrated in-line at its single call site to yield

...
(let k-loop ((k 0))
  (if (fx= k nr2)
      (begin (matrix-set! r i j a)
             (j-loop (fx+ j 1)))
      ...))
...

So Gambit is pushing some unnecessary stack frames in this loop.



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