[Haskell-cafe] benchmarking c/c++ and haskell

[Andrew Coppin]

Vo Minh Thu wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to benchmark C/C++ and Haskell code. The goal is to
> improve the Haskell port[0] of smallpt[1].
>
> To make sure my approach was reliable, I got the code of two programs
> (one in C, the other in Haskell) from a post[2] by Don. The code is
> reproduced below. When timing the execution of both program, I have a
>   
>> 4x difference. It is said on the blog the programs should have
>>     
> similar performance.
>
> I simply don't get the reason of such a difference. I've tried the
> code on my Atom netbook and also on an older centrino machine. The
> timing are similar (i.e. the C and Haskell program show >4x
> difference). Both machines have GHC 6.12.1 on Linux.
>
> Would you have an idea?
>   

The function floor :: Double -> Int is surprisingly slow under GHC. 
(IIRC, it's implemented by converting Double -> (Int, Integer) -> Int, 
or something equally absurd.) Poking around GHC.Prim directly allows you 
to do the same operation much, much faster. I couldn't say exactly how 
much of a difference it makes, but I've had programs go from seconds to 
microseconds just by switching this.

http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/2271
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/1434

My solution was to do this:

http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/AC-Colour/1.1.3/doc/html/src/Data-Colour-FastFloor.html

Uh... good luck! o_O

(Of course, I could be speaking complete nonesense and this bug has 
since been fixed, or the cause of the slowness in smallpt is something 
else...)