Use Bohem's GC for compiler proper in 4.1?

[Zack Weinberg]

Robert Dewar <dewar@adacore.com> writes:

> But I doubt that projects to buy small linear gains in memory usage
> are mainstream very worthwhile in the long run (non-linear gains are
> *always* worth going after by contrast).

Last year CodeSourcery had a contract to speed up the C++ front end at
-O0, and we found that small linear reductions in memory usage
corresponded directly to small linear reductions in time usage, at
about a 2:1 ratio (so 1% less memory -> 0.5% less time).  That
wouldn't be worth bothering with except that there are *lots* of
places where such reductions are available.  We eventually got
something like a 40% overall speedup just from this.  (Sorry, I
haven't got exact numbers.)

zw