Two things here:

* For exceptions-catching primops like catch#, we know
  that the main argument function will be called, so
  we can use strictApply1Dmd, rather than lazy

  Changes in primops.txt.pp

* When a 'case' scrutinises a I/O-performing primop,
  the Note [IO hack in the demand analyser] was
  throwing away all strictness from the code that
  followed.

  I found that this was causing quite a bit of unnecessary
  reboxing in the (heavily used) function
  GHC.IO.Handle.Internals.wantReadableHandle

  So this patch prevents the hack applying when the
  case scrutinises a primop.  See the revised
  Note [IO hack in the demand analyser]

Thse two things buy us quite a lot in programs that do a lot of IO.

        Program           Size    Allocs   Runtime   Elapsed  TotalMem
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            hpg          -0.4%     -2.9%     -0.9%     -1.0%     +0.0%
reverse-complem          -0.4%    -10.9%    +10.7%    +10.9%     +0.0%
         simple          -0.3%     -0.0%    +26.2%    +26.2%     +3.7%
         sphere          -0.3%     -6.3%      0.09      0.09     +0.0%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Min          -0.7%    -10.9%     -4.6%     -4.7%     -1.7%
            Max          -0.2%     +0.0%    +26.2%    +26.2%     +6.5%
 Geometric Mean          -0.4%     -0.3%     +2.1%     +2.1%     +0.1%

I think the increase in runtime for 'simple' is measurement error.