Summary: J. Functional Programming 1 (1): 1--000, January 1993 c
# 1993 Cambridge University Press 1
An Empirical and Analytic Study of
Stack vs. Heap Cost
for Languages with Closures
ANDREW W. APPEL
Dept. of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton NJ 08544­2087, U.S.A. 1
ZHONG SHAO
Dept. of Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven CT 06520­8285, U.S.A. 2
Abstract
We present a comprehensive analysis of all the components of creation, access, and disposal
of heap­allocated and stack­allocated activation records. Among our results are:
. Although stack frames are known to have a better cache read­miss rate than heap
frames, our simple analytical model (backed up by simulation results) shows that the
di#erence is too trivial to matter.
. The cache write­miss rate of heap frames is very high; we show that a variety of
miss­handling strategies (exemplified by specific modern machines) can give good per­
formance, but not all can.
. Stacks restrict the flexibility of closure representations (for higher­order functions) in
important (and costly) ways.

Source: Appel, Andrew W. - Department of Computer Science, Princeton University
Yale University, Department of Computer Science, Flint Project

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences