[Gcl-devel] Re: gcl-2.6.5hi

[Camm Maguire]

Greetings!

Robert Boyer <address@hidden> writes:

> Camm,
> 
> Thanks so very much for the in-lining improvements to gethash!
> 
> Just to test gcl-2.6.5hi a bit, I have built ACL2 on top of it and run some
> very gethash-intensive tests, getting overall speeds ups of 2.5, 8, and 14
> percent on various tests.  No troubles encountered.  So I think you've done a
> wonderful thing.
> 

Great!  

1) Are these the same tests on which you've previously reported gains
   of 30%?  Current implementation should be no worse, but correct
   :-). 
2) The real speedups are to be had through a better hashing
   algorithm.  If I recall, Warren had a proposed patch in this
   regard.  Please feel free to send me such if you still feel hashing
   is too slow.

> Thanks,
> 
> Bob
> 
> P. S. Now for what is undoubtedly a really dumb question.  In the last
> message you sent giving various examples such as:
> 

This is now perhaps a no-op in gcl.  Older code had this in several
places to trigger various inlining behavior, perhaps due to
since-fixed bugs in the type system.  I haven't verified down its
vacuousness in all cases, and so habitually throw it into tests like
these. 

Take care,

>   (defun food (x h)
>     (declare (object x h))
>     (multiple-value-bind (x h) (gethash x h 'bar) (declare (fixnum x h)))
>     'foo)
> 
> what is the point of (declare (object x h))?  I have no idea what the type
> "object" is.  Looking up "object" in the index of the ANSI spec gets me no
> further than the idea than an object is a "real thing".
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Camm Maguire                                            address@hidden
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."  --  Baha'u'llah