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Abstract : |
The context for this paper is functional computation by graph reduction. Our overall aim is more efficient use of memory. The specific topic is the detection of dormant cells in the live graph--- those retained in heap memory though not actually playing a useful role in computation. We describe a profiler that can identify heap consumption by such `useless ' cells. Unlike heap profilers based on traversals of the live heap, this profiler works by examining cells postmortem. The new profiler has revealed a surprisingly large proportion of `useless ' cells, even in some programs that previously seemed space-efficient such as the boot-strapping Haskell compiler nhc., |
