SML/NJ Version 110.28 NEWS

# Standard ML of New Jersey
Version 110.28, May 1, 2000

`http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/what/smlnj/index.html`

> ## Warning

> > > This version is intended for compiler hackers. We are in the midst of substantial structural changes, and this is a snapshot.

> ## Summary:

> - This version has some tuning of phase ordering for FLINT, which mostly solves the excessive space problem during compilation. With this tuning, 110.28 is slightly better than 110.25 in performance, but not quite as good as 110.25+latest MLRISC. See the benchmarks below. Futher work on the register allocator in MLRISC should improve space performance further.

> - CM: Installation scripts have been tweaked. A new noweb tool has been added. ".fun" suffix has been added to those that imply sml compilation. New version numbering scheme added. Alternative syntax for anchored paths added. Parallel make made smarter. Support for "unsharing". Simple "makedepend" functionality added. Further details below.

>   See src/system/README and the latest version of the CM manual at

>   > <http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~blume/SMLNJ-DEV/manual/index.html> <http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~blume/SMLNJ-DEV/manual.ps>

>   for further information about visible changes.

> - A few MLRISC changes, most not SML/NJ related.

> - ML-Yacc: updated manual and examples to be SML '97, SML/NJ 110+ compliant. Examples now compiled with CM.

> - Reported bug fixes:

>          1498. Specialized real arrays not pretty-printed correctly
>          1510. Signature matching bug makes "casts" possible
>          1562. CM complains about unrecognized file extension ".fun"
>          1563. redundant pathconfig contents with multiple builds

>   ## Change Details

>   ### FLINT

>   Tuned ordering of phases to improve time/space performance. See src/compiler/FLINT/opt/flintopt.txt for description of some of the issues.

>   ### MLRISC

>   This update synchronizes my repository with Yale's. Most of these changes, however, do not affect SML/NJ at all (the RA is an exception).

>   1. Register Allocator
>      1. An improvement in the interference graph construction: Given a copy

>                         s <- t

>         no interference edge between s and t is added for this definition of s.

>      2. I've added two new spill heuristic modules that Fermin and I developed (in the new library RA.cm). These are unused in SML/NJ but maybe useful for others (Moby?)

>      3. Added a flag "ra-dump-size" to print out the size of the flowgraph and the interference graph.
>   2. X86
>      1. Various fixes in the backend provided by Fermin [C--] and Lal.

>   3. Alpha
>      1. Added the BSR instruction and code generation that goes with it [C--]

>      2. Other fixes too numerous to recount provided by Fermin [C--]

>      3. PSEUDOARITH was missing in AlphaRewrite. This causes an endless loop in C--.

>   4. Regmaps
>      1. The regmaps are not initialized with the identity physical bindings at creation time. This is unneeded.

>   5. MLRISC Optimizations
>      1. The DJ-Graph module can now compute the iterated dominance frontiers intersects with liveness incrementally in linear time! Woohoo! This is now used in my new SSA construction algorithm.

>      2. THe branch reorganization module is now smarter about linear chains of basic blocks.

>   ### CM

>   - Several manual updates

>     > I always try to keep the manual in sync with CM's latest features.

>   - New noweb tool

>     > The existing system is entirely unaffected by this, but some CM users have asked for renewed noweb support. Everything is documented in the CM manual.

>     > New (plugin) libraries:

>     >        noweb-tool.cm
>     >        nw-ext.cm

>   - CM version numbering added

>     > This is an implementation of Lal's proposal for adding version numbers and version checking to .cm files. Lal said that his proposal was just that -- a proposal. For the time being I went ahead and implemented it so that people can comment on it. Everything is completely backward-compatible (except for the stable library format, i.e., new bootfiles!).

>     > As usual, see the CM manual for details.

>   - Alternative syntax for anchored paths

>     > Dave has recently voiced the same concerns that I had when I did this, so there should be some support. My take is that eventually I will let support for the current syntax (where anchors are "implicit") fade out in favor of the new, explicit syntax. In order to be backward-compatible, both old and new syntax are currently supported.

>     > Again, see the CM manual for details.

>   - Parallel make is trying to be slightly smarter

>     > When the master process finds a "bottleneck", i.e., when there is only one compilation unit that can be compiled and everybody else is waiting on it, then it will simply compile it directly instead of clumsily telling one of the slaves to do it.

>   - Support for "unsharing" added

>     > This is necessary in order to be able to have two different versions of the same library running at the same time (e.g., for trying out a new MLRISC while still having the old MLRISC linked into the current compiler, etc.) See the CM manual.

>   - makedepend

>     > Simple "makedepend" functionality added for generating Makefile dependency information. (This is rather crude at the moment. Expect some changes here in the future.)

>   - New sml class prefix

>     > ".fun" added as a recognized suffix for ML files. Also documented explicitly in the manual that the fallback behavior (unknown suffix -> ML file) is not an official feature!

>   - Pickler

>     > Small changes to the pickler for stable libraries.

>   - Internal cleanup

>     > Several internal changes to CM (for cleanup/improvement).

>   - install.sh changes

>     > I changed config/install.sh to remove duplicate entries from the lib/pathconfig file at the end. Moreover, the final version of lib/pathconfig is sorted alphabetically. The same (sorting) is done in src/system/installml.

>     > The config/install.sh script now consistently uses relative pathnames in lib/pathconfig whenever the anchor is in the lib directory. (So far this was true for the libraries that come pre-compiled and bundled as part of the bootfiles but not for libraries that are compiled by the script itself.)

>     > Changed install.sh script to handle archive files without version number and to use "boot.-" instead of "sml.boot.-" for the name of the boot file archive.

>   ### BENCHMARKS

>   Allen Leung, 28 April 2000:

>   I've rerun the benchmarks to see if anything has slowed down in MLRISC recently, but found nothing. I compared 110.25, 110.25+latest MLRISC, and 110.27+ (which also has the latest MLRISC). 110.25 uses cpsopt, and 110.27+ uses flintopt. [110.27+ is repository state at the end of April, which is essentially 110.28 - dbm].

>   The results are:

>         110.25 versus 110.25+latest MLRISC
>         ----------------------------------
>                  Name   Compilation             Runtime    Speedup
>             barnesHut  5.560  5.368  3.57%    3.690  3.302  11.76%
>                 boyer  8.678  7.672 13.12%    0.313  0.312   0.53%
>          count-graphs  2.048  1.915  6.96%   28.577 27.128   5.34%
>                   fft  1.325  1.233  7.43%    1.060  0.982   7.98%
>           knuthBendix  5.337  4.680 14.03%    0.962  0.918   4.72%
>                lexgen 10.310  9.950  3.62%    0.917  0.902   1.66%
>                  life  1.230  1.127  9.17%    0.128  0.100  28.33%
>                 logic  3.533  3.258  8.44%    5.750  5.413   6.22%
>            mandelbrot  0.145  0.148 -2.25%    0.700  0.685   2.19%
>                mlyacc 34.557 33.342  3.64%    0.553  0.533   3.75%
>               nucleic  6.675  6.507  2.59%    0.173  0.167   4.00%
>         ratio-regions  6.358  6.218  2.25%  119.753 120.772 -0.84%
>                   ray  2.280  2.247  1.48%    3.563  3.517   1.33%
>                simple  9.798  9.650  1.54%    2.987  3.083  -3.14%
>                   tsp  1.763  1.528 15.38%    8.657  7.718  12.16%
>                  vliw 33.938 32.570  4.20%    1.982  2.000  -0.92%
>       Average speedup:  5.32%
>       Average compile time speedup:  5.95%

>   As you can see, MLRISC on x86 has improved slightly since the 110.25. Now comparing 110.25 with 110.27+:

>          110.25 versus 110.27+
>          ---------------------
>                  Name   Compilation             Runtime    Speedup
>             barnesHut  5.560  5.568  -0.15%   3.690  3.347  10.26%
>                 boyer  8.678 10.058 -13.72%   0.313  0.322  -2.59%
>          count-graphs  2.048  2.125  -3.61%  28.577 31.533  -9.38%
>                   fft  1.325  1.297   2.19%   1.060  1.052   0.79%
>           knuthBendix  5.337  3.737  42.82%   0.962  1.175 -18.16%
>                lexgen 10.310  9.985   3.25%   0.917  0.992  -7.56%
>                  life  1.230  1.105  11.31%   0.128  0.125   2.67%
>                 logic  3.533  3.302   7.02%   5.750  5.357   7.34%
>            mandelbrot  0.145  0.162 -10.31%   0.700  0.753  -7.08%
>                mlyacc 34.557 37.292  -7.33%   0.553  0.493  12.16%
>               nucleic  6.675  7.717 -13.50%   0.173  0.165   5.05%
>         ratio-regions  6.358  3.915  62.41% 119.753 126.153 -5.07%
>                   ray  2.280  2.142   6.46%   3.563  2.827  26.06%
>                simple  9.798 10.067  -2.67%   2.987  2.812   6.22%
>                   tsp  1.763  1.605   9.87%   8.657  8.870  -2.41%
>                  vliw 33.938 46.907 -27.65%   1.982  1.802   9.99%
>       Average speedup:  1.77%
>       Average compile time speedup:  4.15%

>         110.25+latest MLRISC versus 110.27+
>         -----------------------------------
>                  Name   Compilation              Runtime    Speedup
>             barnesHut  5.368  5.568  -3.59%    3.302  3.347  -1.34%
>                 boyer  7.672 10.058 -23.73%    0.312  0.322  -3.11%
>          count-graphs  1.915  2.125  -9.88%   27.128 31.533 -13.97%
>                   fft  1.233  1.297  -4.88%    0.982  1.052  -6.66%
>           knuthBendix  4.680  3.737  25.25%    0.918  1.175 -21.84%
>                lexgen  9.950  9.985  -0.35%    0.902  0.992  -9.08%
>                  life  1.127  1.105   1.96%    0.100  0.125 -20.00%
>                 logic  3.258  3.302  -1.31%    5.413  5.357   1.06%
>            mandelbrot  0.148  0.162  -8.25%    0.685  0.753  -9.07%
>                mlyacc 33.342 37.292 -10.59%    0.533  0.493   8.11%
>               nucleic  6.507  7.717 -15.68%    0.167  0.165   1.01%
>         ratio-regions  6.218  3.915  58.83%  120.772 126.153 -4.27%
>                   ray  2.247  2.142   4.90%    3.517  2.827  24.41%
>                simple  9.650 10.067  -4.14%    3.083  2.812   9.66%
>                   tsp  1.528  1.605  -4.78%    7.718  8.870 -12.98%
>                  vliw 32.570 46.907 -30.56%    2.000  1.802  11.01%
>       Average speedup: -2.94%
>       Average compile time speedup: -1.68%

>   Overall, I'd say 110.27+ is pretty competitive with 110.25. There are some big improvements (ray, vliw, mlyacc) which can only be attributed to FLINT changes. But something has slowed down (tsp, knuth-bendix, life, mandelbrot, count-graphs). [We know the reasons with knuth-bendix.] Also, compilation time in 110.27+ is generally slower (which is offset by huge improvements in knuth-bendix and ratio-regions).

>   Last modified: Tue May 2 15:34:00 EDT 2000