GC performance - was Re: [gclist] GC topics

[fjh@cs.mu.OZ.AU]

Darius Blasband, you wrote:
> 
> In any case, I think we agree on the fact that precise GC is far easier,
> and globally more reliable and faster than conservative GC's...

I definitely disagree about precise GC being easier.

Plugging in Hans Boehm's conservative garbage collector to our
Mercury implementation was very easy.  It took a couple of days at most.

Writing our own precise GC has so far consumed the work of one honours
thesis and two summer studentships (i.e. about 6 man-months of work),
and it still isn't complete.

-- 
Fergus Henderson             	WWW: http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh
fjh@cs.mu.oz.au              	PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3