I suspected that is what it was. I just filed 
https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/10278 to capture this discussion 
here, but I believe we do have issues open.

-viral

On Sunday, February 22, 2015 at 1:34:59 PM UTC+5:30, Jameson wrote:
>
> There's currently a known issue with the way operators (like +) get 
> codegen'd for many arguments that can cause this sort of performance issue. 
> There's definite plans to fix this. For now, simply splitting consecutive 
> applications of + onto separate lines should resolve it.
>
> On Sun Feb 22 2015 at 2:59:07 AM Viral Shah <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> The memory usage balloons once the expression becomes bigger:
>>
>> julia> g(a0,a1,a2,a3,a4,x) = for i=1:10^6; f = a0 + a1*x +a2*x^2 + 
>> a3*x^3; end
>> g (generic function with 3 methods)
>>
>> julia> @time g(1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1+im)
>> elapsed time: 0.011524283 seconds (104 bytes allocated)
>>
>> As soon as I introduce the x^4 term, I get:
>>
>> julia> g(a0,a1,a2,a3,a4,x) = for i=1:10^6; f = a0 + a1*x +a2*x^2 + a3*x^3 
>> + a4*x^4; end
>> g (generic function with 3 methods)
>>
>> julia> @time g(1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1.0,1+im)
>> elapsed time: 0.081671568 seconds (129 MB allocated, 10.74% gc time in 6 
>> pauses with 0 full sweep)
>>
>> -viral
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, February 22, 2015 at 7:14:22 AM UTC+5:30, DumpsterDoofus wrote:
>>
>>> I wrote a simple script for a Schroder fractal (a distant cousin of 
>>> Newton fractals) of a fourth-order polynomial:
>>> function SchroderFourth(a0::Float64, a1::Float64, a2::Float64, 
>>> a3::Float64, a4::Float64, c::Complex{Float64})
>>> x = c
>>> x2 = c
>>> M = 100
>>> R = 10.0^-6
>>> a = 0.1
>>> for j in 1:M
>>> x2 = x
>>> f = a0 + a1*x + a2*x^2 + a3*x^3 + a4*x^4
>>> fP = a1 + 2*a2*x + 3*a3*x^2 + 4*a4*x^3
>>> fPP = 2*a2 + 6*a3*x + 12*a4*x^2;
>>> x = x - f*fP/(fP^2 - fPP*f)
>>> if abs(x - x2) < R
>>> return exp(-a*(j - (log(abs(x - x2))-log(R))/log(R)) + angle(x)im)
>>> end
>>> end
>>> return 0.0 + 0.0im
>>> end
>>>
>>> I tested it using @time as follows:
>>> @time arr = [SchroderFourth(1.0,2.0,3.0,4.0,5.0,x+y*im) for x in 
>>> linspace(-2,2,1000), y in linspace(-2,2,1000)];
>>> resulting in 
>>> elapsed time: 3.371773428 seconds (2239441280 bytes allocated, 48.23% gc 
>>> time)
>>>
>>> So it's allocating 2.2GB throughout the computation, and half the time 
>>> is gc time. I have heard that sometimes this is caused by type instability, 
>>> but the SchroderFourth function is type-stable (always returns 
>>> Complex{Float64}). Am I committing any "great sins" in my implementation?
>>>
>>> Given that the array has 1M computations, and each computation loops at 
>>> most M=100 loops, I suppose it's possible that gigabytes of allocation 
>>> could occur if a memory address was gobbled up after each iteration of the 
>>> loop. In comparison, running the same computation on the (simpler) "mandel" 
>>> fractal on the JuliaLang website gives much less memory allocation (8MB):
>>> function mandel(z)
>>>     c = z
>>>     maxiter = 80
>>>     for n = 1:maxiter
>>>         if abs(z) > 2
>>>             return n-1
>>>         end
>>>         z = z^2 + c
>>>     end
>>>     return maxiter
>>> end
>>> @time arr = [mandel(x+y*im) for x in linspace(-2,2,1000), y in 
>>> linspace(-2,2,1000)];
>>> giving
>>> elapsed time: 0.123358763 seconds (8016176 bytes allocated)
>>>
>>> Any clues as to the large disparity in memory allocation between the two 
>>> functions? I assume I'm doing something dumb that's causing memory to be 
>>> allocated and gc'ed after each iteration, but am having trouble finding 
>>> what is causing it.
>>>
>>>
>>>

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