Bryn Mawr College Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College Computer Science Faculty Research and Computer Science Scholarship 2017 Levity Polymorphism Richard A. Eisenberg Bryn Mawr College,
[email protected] Simon Peyton Jones Microsoft Research, Cambridge,
[email protected] Let us know how access to this document benefits ouy . Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.brynmawr.edu/compsci_pubs Part of the Programming Languages and Compilers Commons Custom Citation R.A. Eisenberg and S. Peyton Jones 2017. "Levity Polymorphism." Proceeding PLDI 2017 Proceedings of the 38th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation: 525-539. This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. http://repository.brynmawr.edu/compsci_pubs/69 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Levity Polymorphism Richard A. Eisenberg Simon Peyton Jones Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, USA Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK
[email protected] [email protected] Abstract solves the problem, but it is terribly slow (Section 2.1). Thus Parametric polymorphism is one of the linchpins of modern motivated, most polymorphic languages also support some typed programming, but it comes with a real performance form of unboxed values that are represented not by a pointer penalty. We describe this penalty; offer a principled way to but by the value itself. For example, the Glasgow Haskell reason about it (kinds as calling conventions); and propose Compiler (GHC), a state of the art optimizing compiler for levity polymorphism. This new form of polymorphism allows Haskell, has supported unboxed values for decades. abstractions over calling conventions; we detail and verify But unboxed values come at the price of convenience restrictions that are necessary in order to compile levity- and re-use (Section 3).