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International Symposium on Trends in Functional Programming

TFP 2017: Trends in Functional Programming pp 1–18Cite as

Memoized Flat Closures for CPS

or Taming Memory Allocation for \(\lambda \) in CPS

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 10788))

Abstract

Compilers for functional languages are judged, in part, on how well they handle \(\lambda \)-expressions. The evaluation of \(\lambda \)-expressions traditionally requires closure allocations which can be intensive and can interact poorly with a garbage collector. Work on closure representation and garbage collection has successfully improved this interaction. This work, however, does not address the actual allocation of closures in the first place. This is important, because the only closures that do not have to be garbage collected are the closures that are never allocated. This article explores a novel mechanism to reduce flat-closure allocations based on memoization. To test this new mechanism, a compiler has been developed that uses continuation-passing style as an intermediate representation–which makes closure allocation ubiquitous. Empirical results strongly suggest that flat-closure memoization is an important optimization that significantly reduces running time as well as memory and closure allocation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This study, however, was performed using the imperative C language.

  2. 2.

    The use of bold type signals a reserved word.

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Acknowledgements

The Physics Nobel Laureate, Richard Feynman, was once asked to explain why spin one-half particles obey Fermi Dirac statistics [27]. He rose to the challenge and responded that he will prepare a freshman lecture on it. A few days later he returned and stated that “I could not do it. I could not reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.” The authors thank the Computer Science Department at Seton Hall University for their support that made the development of this work possible and for their support of our continuing efforts to make this material understandable to young and upcoming computer scientists.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Seton Hall University, South Orange, USA

    Marco T. Morazán, Nicholas R. Olson & Shamil Dzhatdoyev

  2. University of Massachusetts, Lowell, USA

    Lindsey M. Reams

Authors
  1. Marco T. Morazán
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  2. Lindsey M. Reams
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  3. Nicholas R. Olson
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  4. Shamil Dzhatdoyev
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marco T. Morazán .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom

    Meng Wang

  2. University of Kent, Kent, United Kingdom

    Scott Owens

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Morazán, M.T., Reams, L.M., Olson, N.R., Dzhatdoyev, S. (2018). Memoized Flat Closures for CPS. In: Wang, M., Owens, S. (eds) Trends in Functional Programming. TFP 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10788. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89719-6_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89719-6_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89718-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89719-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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