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> It's efficient when compared to equivalent sequential execution.

It looks like they're comparing against MLton, which is interesting since it performs whole-program optimisation. That makes their speedups even more impressive!

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MPL is based on MLton, so they also do whole-program optimisation (the same one, in fact).

Yes, but I imagine traditional compiler optimisations like inlining, unrolling, etc. are easier to apply to serial code.

Well, to the compiler, the parallelism probably just looks like an opaque call to a higher-order function. The bulk of the program will still be serial code, which will be subject to all the normal optimisations. I talked a bit with one of the main authors of MPL, and he mentioned that the existing optimisation passes in MLton just kept working without any nontrivial modifications.

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