I don't see a memory allocator among the functions. How does this page help
with allocations?

hhr

On Mon, Oct 23, 2023, 6:10 PM Eric Iverson <eric.b.iver...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think gmp has proven itself and the cleanup you suggest would be
> worthwhile.
>
> On Sun, Oct 15, 2023 at 11:12 AM Raul Miller <rauldmil...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Some time ago, Elijah Stone pointed out that using
> > https://gmplib.org/manual/Low_002dlevel-Functions we could use J's
> > memory management routines directly, without having to deal with
> > libgmp's "exit the program if the library can't allocate memory"
> > behavior.
> >
> > This seems like it would be a good thing for us. When completed, we
> > could eliminate the memory pool currently used when handling extended
> > values, and we could also relax the current limit placed on the
> > magnitude of extended values.
> >
> > But changing everything all at once is a good way to never get started.
> >
> > So, it's worth thinking about how we could organize this kind of effort.
> >
> > Currently, the code is partitioned in three chunks: libgmp itself (or
> > mpir on windows), the jgmp.h/jgmpinit.h glue, and macros defined in
> > jgmp.h which are used in most of the rest of the system. (There's also
> > a few direct calls to libgmp functions in k.c, v2.c, vq.c, vx.c and
> > wn.c)
> >
> > So, conceptually speaking, we could implement workalikes for these
> > macros (things like XaddXX() which rely on the lower level mpn_
> > functions instead of the problematic mpz_ / mpq_ functions. (We could
> > replace the direct calls with suitable macros, along the way. (Or, if
> > there's cases where there's really a significant performance
> > advantage, we could replace them with suitable direct calls to the
> > memory management routines and mpn_ functions. But this seems
> > unlikely.))
> >
> > The trick would be allowing XNUM and RAT values whose memory was
> > allocated via libgmp to coexist with XNUM and RAT values whose memory
> > was allocated using J's memory manager. The details here are a bit
> > annoying, but fundamentally we've already provided for this.
> >
> > Basically, the distinction matters when we free the memory. And, that
> > decision is based on FHRHISGMP==AFHRH(x) vs FHRHISGMP!=AFHRH(x) in
> > jgmp.h and jgmpinit.c
> >
> > -----------------------------------------------
> >
> > So.. it seems to me that if we created a parallel glue rig -- maybe
> > jgmpn.h -- we could start migrating functionality to the mpn_* family
> > of functions and J's "native" memory management. XaddXX() seems like
> > the place to start.
> >
> > I would need to figure out how to deal with the "realloc" cases where
> > the amount of memory required for a calculation (like multiply or
> > format) might be larger or smaller - perhaps significantly larger -
> > than the memory needed to represent the result.
> >
> > But, once started, the work could proceed gradually. As long as the
> > primitives continue to function, users mostly wouldn't notice the
> > changes. (And, ok, that sounds discouraging. But hopefully the end
> > result would be worth it.)
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > My thought is that this kind of code cleanup seems worthwhile.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > --
> > Raul
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>
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