mwc-random-0.10.0.0: README.markdown

# Efficient, general purpose pseudo-random number generation

This package provides the System.Random.MWC module, a Haskell library
for generating high-quality pseudo-random numbers in a space- and
time-efficient way.


# Performance

This library has been carefully optimised for high performance.  To
obtain the best runtime efficiency, it is imperative to compile
libraries and applications that use this library using a high level of
optimisation.

Suggested GHC options:

    -O -fvia-C -funbox-strict-fields

To illustrate, here are the times (in seconds) to generate and sum 250
million random Word32 values, on a laptop with a 2.4GHz Core2 Duo
P8600 processor, running Fedora 11 and GHC 6.10.3:

    no flags   200+
    -O           1.249
    -O -fvia-C   0.991

As the numbers above suggest, compiling without optimisation will
yield unacceptable performance.


# Get involved!

Please report bugs via the
[github issue tracker](http://github.com/bos/mwc-random).

Master git [git repository](http://github.com/bos/mwc-random):

* `git clone git://github.com/bos/mwc-random.git`

There's also a [Mercurial mirror](http://bitbucket.org/bos/mwc-random):

* `hg clone http://bitbucket.org/bos/mwc-random`

(You can create and contribute changes using either Mercurial or git.)


# Authors

This library is written and maintained by Bryan O'Sullivan,
<bos@serpentine.com>.