OCaml Runtime
The runtime part of OCaml dovetails with the compiled code, providing the major services needed for an OCaml program to function, such as memory allocation and garbage collection. The runtime is not generated anew for each compiled program – it’s mostly written in C code that is compiled to run together with the generated code (in the case of native compilation), or to additionally run the OCaml bytecode (in the case of bytecode compilation).
Heap Data Scheme
In order to facilitate garbage collection (GC), all data allocated in the OCaml heap must have an appropriate header. The GC is a ‘dumb’ piece of code that does not know the specifics of a compiled program: it must be able to look at data in memory and ‘scan’ it correctly.
Header
The header is specified in the /runtime/caml/mlvalues.h file. 2 formats of the header exist: one for 32-bit programs and one for 64-bit programs.
The 32-bit header is as follows:
| word-size | color | tag |
|---|---|---|
| 22 bits | 2 bits | 8 bits |
While the 64-bit header is:
| word-size | color | tag |
|---|---|---|
| 54 bits | 2 bits | 8 bits |
Where word-size is the number of machine words
(4 bytes on 32-bit architectures, 8 bytes on 64-bit architectures),
color is used by the GC algorithm, and tag categorizes the data.
Word Size
In the 32-bit header, OCaml is limited to sizes 2^22 words, or 16MB. This limitation is only relevant to arrays and strings/bytes, but it becomes a serious problem when trying to write code that can handle strings and arrays of arbitrary size. It has become common practice to use Bigarrays for strings for this reason.
On 64-bit platforms, 54 bits are more than enough space for any conceivable array, and therefore the limitation does not exist. However, code that should run on both 64 and 32-bit platforms will often still use Bigarrays.
Tag
The tag is used to tell the runtime system and the GC about the kind of data contained in the block. Tag values 0 through 245 are used for things such as declared types. For example, in the type
type t = A | B of int | C of float
The tag for A will be 0, for B will be 1, and for C will be 2.
OCaml therefore allows for a maximum number of 246 options in a sum type.
Any more, and compilation will fail.
The tags 246-255 are reserved for:
| Tag | Usage |
|---|---|
| 246 | Lazy values |
| 247 | Closures |
| 248 | Objects |
| 249 | Infix values inside closures |
| 250 | Forward values (lazy values that have been forced) |
| 251 | Abstract values (shouldn’t be scanned by GC) |
| 252 | Strings |
| 253 | Floating-point value |
| 254 | Flat floating-point array |
| 255 | Custom tag (for bundling non-OCaml data) |
Any data with tag >= 251 is not scanned by the GC.