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Re: Faster compilation speed
On 13-Aug-2002, David S. Miller <davem@redhat.com> wrote:
> From: Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.OZ.AU>
> Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 14:46:37 +1000
>
> Yes, but GCC could use the Boehm GC on systems which supported it,
> if the Boehm GC was faster...
>
> I think this would be a very interesting experiment.
>
> Feel free to even try it with an infinitely fast GC, even
> one that executed in zero time.
>
> Because for the millionth time, it's not the performance of GC itself.
> It's the temporal and spatial locality problems of data accesses which
> is a fundamental result of using GC for memory allocation.
>
> It is not an issue of "how fast" the GC is.
Look, there are a number of possible memory management strategies and
implementations possible. GC using GCC's current GC implementation is
one. Conservative GC using the Boehm collector is another. Reference
counting is another. Reference counting has its own set of drawbacks
for locality, so it's not clear it would be a win; doing the experiment
would be a *lot* of work. If someone really feels strongly about RC,
and has lots of time, by all means, go for it.
Using the Boehm collector is less likely to be a huge win, but it might
well be a significant win, and it would be much easier to carry out
that experiment.
--
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au> | "I have always known that the pursuit
The University of Melbourne | of excellence is a lethal habit"
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh> | -- the last words of T. S. Garp.