The nofib Benchmark Suite of Haskell Programs

This position paper describes the need for, make-up of, and "rules of the game" for a benchmark suite of Haskell programs. (It does not include results from running the suite.) Those of us working on the Glasgow Haskell compiler hope this suite will encourage sound, quantitative assessment of lazy functional programming systems. This version of this paper reflects the state of play at the initial pre-release of the suite. 1 Towards lazy functional benchmarking 1.1 History of benchmarking---functional The quantitative measurement of systems for lazy functional programming is a near-scandalous subject. Dancing behind a thin veil of disclaimers, researchers in the field can still be found quoting "nfibs/sec" (or something equally egregious) , as if this refers to anything remotely interesting. The April, 1989, Computer Journal special issue on lazy functional programming is a not-too-dated self-portrait of the community that promotes computing in this way. It is one that non-specialists..