Keynote from Simon Peyton Jones - Into the Core: Understanding GHC’s Intermediate Language
Please log in to watch this conference skillscast.
GHC translates all of Haskell into a tiny intermediate language called Core, does a lot of optimisations on Core, and then generates executable code. In this talk I’ll take you on a journey into Core, with several goals. First, if you ever do performance-debugging of a Haskell program you may well find yourself staring at Core dumps to understand the program that the computer is executing (it may look nothing like the one you wrote!). Second, one way to extend GHC is to write a Core-to-Core plugin to do some cool optimisation or transformation that you want; and you can only do that if you understand Core.
Lastly, even if you want to do none of these things, I think you may enjoy the adventure. Core is a tiny but super-expressive language that can express all of Haskell, including all the types, and more beside. It pulls off this trick by drawing directly on System F, a mathematical calculus from type theory. Functional programming is amazing: serious theory leads directly to beautiful implementations.
Join us at the Haskell eXchange in 2016!
Want to learn about the latest innovations in Haskell? Join 200+ Haskell and functional programmers to learn and share skills with some of the world's top Haskell experts at the Haskell eXchange 2016 in London. Find out all about Haskell's infrastructure roadmap, learn how Haskell is used in academia and enterprise and discover how Haskell is changing the way our industry tackles complex engineering problems. Early bird tickets already available!
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Thanks to our sponsors
Keynote from Simon Peyton Jones - Into the Core: Understanding GHC’s Intermediate Language
Simon Peyton Jones
Simon Peyton Jones, MA, MBCS, CEng, graduated from Trinity College Cambridge in 1980. Simon was a key contributor to the design of the now-standard functional language Haskell, and is the lead designer of the widely-used Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC). He has written two textbooks about the implementation of functional languages.
Please log in to watch this conference skillscast.
GHC translates all of Haskell into a tiny intermediate language called Core, does a lot of optimisations on Core, and then generates executable code. In this talk I’ll take you on a journey into Core, with several goals. First, if you ever do performance-debugging of a Haskell program you may well find yourself staring at Core dumps to understand the program that the computer is executing (it may look nothing like the one you wrote!). Second, one way to extend GHC is to write a Core-to-Core plugin to do some cool optimisation or transformation that you want; and you can only do that if you understand Core.
Lastly, even if you want to do none of these things, I think you may enjoy the adventure. Core is a tiny but super-expressive language that can express all of Haskell, including all the types, and more beside. It pulls off this trick by drawing directly on System F, a mathematical calculus from type theory. Functional programming is amazing: serious theory leads directly to beautiful implementations.
Join us at the Haskell eXchange in 2016!
Want to learn about the latest innovations in Haskell? Join 200+ Haskell and functional programmers to learn and share skills with some of the world's top Haskell experts at the Haskell eXchange 2016 in London. Find out all about Haskell's infrastructure roadmap, learn how Haskell is used in academia and enterprise and discover how Haskell is changing the way our industry tackles complex engineering problems. Early bird tickets already available!
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:
- Haskell eXchange 2019 (in London on 10th - 11th October 2019)
- Fireside chat: Martin Odersky & Simon Peyton Jones (SkillsCast recorded in December 2018)
- Introduction to Docker Fundamentals (in London on 30th September - 1st October 2019)
- CloudNative London 2019 (in London on 25th - 27th September 2019)
- Converting Architectural Requirements into Code using CloudFormation (in London on 18th September 2019)
- Fast Track to F# with Tomas Petricek (in London on 4th - 5th November 2019)
- Lightbend Akka for Scala - Professional (in London on 11th - 12th November 2019)
- Clojure eXchange 2019 (in London on 2nd - 3rd December 2019)
- F#unctional Londoners September (in London on 18th September 2019)
- Keynote by Konrad Kokosa: What’s New in .NET Core 3.0 and .NET 5.0 for Performance and Memory-Aware Folks? (in London on 29th October 2019)
- Scala 2.13 and Beyond! (SkillsCast recorded in April 2019)
- Introduction to Markov Chains in F# (SkillsCast recorded in April 2019)
Thanks to our sponsors
Keynote from Simon Peyton Jones - Into the Core: Understanding GHC’s Intermediate Language
Simon Peyton Jones
Simon Peyton Jones, MA, MBCS, CEng, graduated from Trinity College Cambridge in 1980. Simon was a key contributor to the design of the now-standard functional language Haskell, and is the lead designer of the widely-used Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC). He has written two textbooks about the implementation of functional languages.