Add alignment-restricted ForeignPtr allocation actions
Whilst GHC.ForeignPtr exports some actions to allocate buffers containing an element of some type, or of some specific byte-length efficiently, and there's an implementation of newAlignedPinnedByteArray# used internally, there's no way to request such buffer of a given size and at a given alignment.
The ability to enforce a specific alignment for some memory buffer is important e.g. when working with SIMD instructions (which is my original use-case). My attempts to work-around the lack of this function failed miserably (with a reproducible test-case) as mentioned in [1].
[1] http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/glasgow-haskell-users/2012-July/022579.html
Trac metadata
| Trac field | Value |
|---|---|
| Version | |
| Type | FeatureRequest |
| TypeOfFailure | OtherFailure |
| Priority | normal |
| Resolution | Unresolved |
| Component | libraries/base |
| Test case | |
| Differential revisions | |
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