[Haskell-beginners] Haskell code optimisation

I was trying to write below program for ackerman function but it fails (waits too long) for ack(4,1) whereas a recursive C program gives result in 37secs.Can someone pls explain this behaviour and recomend some optimisation. ------haskell code f m n | m==0 =n+1 | n==0 = f (m-1) 1 | otherwise = f (m-1) (f m (n-1)) Thanks Abhishek Kumar