"Alberto G. Corona "
Hi Will, Right, I'm not an expert on low level things, but yes, each memory page can cache a different vector and even can work faster. Specially if the algoritm uses a few fields of a large structure. I was wrong on that.
But anyway, Unboxed need more native support to give Haskell more credibility in performance critical problems. Now it has some conversion overhead for user defined data. That may be optimized away but the whole thing is second class, via an instance instead of a language feature.
Maybe automatic deriving Unboxed instances can be the right compromise
Given how the imagination immediately suggests that: 1. performance nuances dictated by the context might suggest different preferences for Unboxed encodings.. 2. and, on the other hand, given the undesirability of always engaging oneself into full-blown instance definition -- for various reasons.. ..it suggests that a language feature would be helpful, that would allow to gradually inform the derivation GHC makes, without fully engaging into specifying complete details. Can we imagine that a derivation could proceed, for example, from: - a /subset/ of minimal typeclass definition, or alternatively - direct parameters ..? Also, a set of deeper questions could be asked, if you can forgive me this daydreaming.. If we follow the spirit of self-defined languages (won't name them): 1. does it make sense to "open up" the process of derivation? 2. what prevents us from describing derivations as a functional transformation? 3. what is the possible language for these -- TH? something else? -- с уважениeм / respectfully, Косырев Сергей