GammaCMC: A Novel Way of Compiling Functional Languages

The efficient compilation of functional languages has been shown to be a difficult task. The most successful implementations so far generate code in assembly language. This makes implementation extremely hard and machine dependent. In this paper we present Gamma CMC, a new abstract machine, in which we transfer the control of the execution flow to C, as much as possible. Gamma CMC takes advantage of the extremely low costs of procedure calls in modern RISC architectures. This produces a substantial improvement in performance, as we show here. Published in: UKC Lab.Report 7/92 (Submitted to Journal of Programming Languages Design and Imp.) (A short version of this paper will appear as Gamma CMC: Fast lazy functional languages Microprocessing & Microprogramming, April/93)