RunningOnSparc - MLton Standard ML Compiler (SML Compiler)

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MLton runs fine on the Sparc architecture.

## Notes

- When compiling for Sparc, MLton targets the 32-bit Sparc architecture (i.e., Sparc V8).

- When compiling for Sparc, MLton doesn't support native code generation (`-codegen native`). Hence, performance is not as good as it might be and compile times are longer. Also, the quality of code generated by `gcc` is important. By default, MLton calls `gcc -O1`. You can change this by calling MLton with `-cc-opt -O2`. We have seen this speed up some programs by as much as 30%, especially those involving floating point; however, it can also more than double compile times.

- When compiling for Sparc, MLton uses `-align 8` by default. While this speeds up reals, it also may increase object sizes. If your program does not make significant use of reals, you might see a speedup with `-align 4`.

## Known issues

- Bootstrapping on the Sparc architecture is so slow as to be impractical (many hours on a 500MHz UltraSparc). For this reason, we strongly recommend building with a cross compiler.

## Also see

- RunningOnSolaris

Last edited on 2010-06-01 01:02:32 by MatthewFluet.