[bitc-dev] Efficient compilation of arrays, FISh

[Jørgen Hermanrud Fjeld]

Since BitC is targeted to be fast, I wondered how you plan to handle
arrays, and the compilation of methods on arrays. 
This might be of topic for the purpose of BitC, but it is certainly
important for speed and safety of matrix multiplication or other
operations on arrays. 
The work shape analysis for efficient code generation in the research
language FISh [1] does demonstrate very good results in comparison to C,
and has a theoretical foundation. 
Have you considered such approaches, and if, what where your
considerations?

I think the main interest of FISh is the static type checking of
arrays, where the size of the array is reflected in the type system by
the shape. 

The O'Caml type system does not regard array size as a statically
checked property, neither does the extensional polymorphism. 
To efficiently compile operations on arrays and be able to statically
guarantee the absence of run-time errors from array related operations,
would require something like FISh, such that if you do not plan to
address this issue now, you can at least consider it in the future.

[1] http://www-staff.socs.uts.edu.au/~cbj/FISh/index.html

-- 
Sincerely | Homepage:
Jørgen    | http://www.hex.no/jhf
          | Public GPG key:
          | http://www.hex.no/jhf/key.txt
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