116-120 Goswell Road
London, England EC1V 7DP

Before 2.8, the scala compiler compiled generic classes using type erasure, just like Java. However, there is a significant performance drop for primitive types: in order to satisfy the JVM requirements, primitive values need to be boxed when they enter generic code.

Boxing means wrapping a primitive value in a heap-allocated object. Whenever code operates on such values, it needs first to extract the value from the object, operate on it, then box it back.

Specialization ensures that boxing does not happen, by generating specialized versions of generic code.

Performance improvements may reach an order of magnitude.

In this talk Iulian will look at several specialized classes in the standard library, he will explain how specialization works, the benefits and some potential traps.

Official Website: http://skillsmatter.com/event/scala/scala-performance-improvements-of-a-factor-of-4-to-30-boxing-and-specialization/wd-1241

Added by SkillsMatter on November 30, 2010

Interested 1