A recent technical note from Microsoft describes a new reference counting algorithm, Perceus. It seemed worth posting here in case there are any thoughts about whether it might be useful for Python. I couldn't find any existing references to it in this list.
""" We introduce Perceus, an algorithm for precise reference counting with reuse and specialization. Starting from a func- tional core language with explicit control-flow, Perceus emits precise reference counting instructions such that programs are garbage free, where only live references are retained. This enables further optimizations, like reuse analysis that allows for guaranteed in-place updates at runtime. This in turn enables a novel programming paradigm that we call functional but in-place (FBIP). Much like tail-call optimiza- tion enables writing loops with regular function calls, reuse analysis enables writing in-place mutating algorithms in a purely functional way. We give a novel formalization of ref- erence counting in a linear resource calculus, and prove that Perceus is sound and garbage free. We show evidence that Perceus, as implemented in Koka, has good performance and is competitive with other state-of-the-art memory collectors. """ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2020/11/perceus-tr-v1.pdf _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-dev-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/message/7KJAGPJZ66U4GGGABWMVDEPW6RDJ2XT7/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
