#8703: Use guard pages rather than heap checks ------------------------------------+------------------------------------- Reporter: schyler | Owner: simonmar Type: feature request | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: Component: Runtime System | Version: Keywords: | Operating System: Unknown/Multiple Architecture: Unknown/Multiple | Type of failure: None/Unknown Difficulty: Unknown | Test Case: Blocked By: | Blocking: Related Tickets: | ------------------------------------+------------------------------------- By mmap'ing memory using MAP_ANONYMOUS (or /dev/zero) as PROT_NONE (Windows has an equivalent functionality with VirtualAlloc), it's possible to create a page that will fault when read or written to. It may be possible to remove the heap checks in the runtime, speeding up allocations, and instead expand the heap when a fault is raised. This is likely cheaper for large pages full of many small allocations than the cost of the heap checking branch. -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/8703 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler