Optimizing Higher-Order Functions in Scala

• Presented at: Third International Workshop on Implementation, Compilation, Optimization of Object-Oriented Languages, Programs and Systems, Paphos, Cyprus, July 7, 2008
• : , 2008

Scala relies on libraries as the default mechanism for language extension. While this provides an elegant solution for growing the language, the performance penalty incurred by call-by-name parameters, boxing and anonymous functions is high. We show that inlining alone is not enough to remove this overhead, and present a solution based on decompilation of library code combined with inlining, dead code elimination, and copy propagation. We evaluate our approach on two language extensions, Java-like assert and C-like for-loops and show improvements of up to 45%.

Keywords: compilers ; optimization ; Scala ; higher order functions

Reference

• LAMP-CONF-2008-004

Record created on 2008-09-25, modified on 2017-05-12