Original bug ID: 6180
Reporter: @mmottl
Assigned to: @alainfrisch
Status: closed (set by @xavierleroy on 2015-12-11T18:25:23Z)
Resolution: fixed
Priority: low
Severity: feature
Version: 4.01.0
Fixed in version: 4.02.0+dev
Category: back end (clambda to assembly)
Monitored by: @gasche @hcarty @mmottl

Bug description

Would it be possible to provide a primitive that can efficiently allocate a block of a given length with a double tag without initializing its contents (which won't be scanned anyway)? This could then be exposed e.g. in the Array-module as follows:

val alloc_floats : int -> float array = "%alloc_floats"

Allocating float arrays this way could speed up some numeric code. Users who need to optimize allocation performance of pure, mutable float records would also benefit.