Haskell ways to the 3n+1 challenge - haskell

Question

Here is a simple programming problem from SPOJ: http://www.spoj.com/problems/PROBTRES/.
Basically, you are asked to output the biggest Collatz cycle for numbers between i and j. (Collatz cycle of a number $n$ is the number of steps to eventually get from $n$ to 1.)
I have been looking for a Haskell way to solve the problem with comparative performance than that of Java or C++ (so as to fits in the allowed run-time limit). Although a simple Java solution that memoizes the cycle length of any already computed cycles will work. I haven't been successful at applying the idea to obtain a Haskell solution.
I have tried the Data.Function.Memoize, as well as home-brewed log time memoization technique using the idea from this post: Memoization in Haskell?. Unfortunately, memoization actually makes the computation of cycle(n) even slower. I believe the slow down comes from the overhead of haskell way. (I tried running with the compiled binary code, instead of interpreting.)
I also suspect that simply iterating numbers from i to j can be costly ($i,j\le10^6$). So I even tried precompute everything for the range query, using idea from http://blog.openendings.net/2013/10/range-trees-and-profiling-in-haskell.html. However, this still gives "Time Limit Exceeding" error.
Can you help to inform a neat competitive Haskell program for this?
Thanks!

Answer 1

>>> using the approach bellow, I could submit an accepted answer to SPOJ. You may check the entire code from here.
The problem has bounds 0 < n < 1,000,000. Pre-calculate all of them and store them inside an array; then freeze the array. The array can be used as its own cache / memoization space.
The problem would then reduce to a range query problem over an array, which can be done very efficiently using trees.
With the code bellow I can get Collatz of 1..1,000,000 in a fraction of a second:
$ time echo 1000000 | ./collatz
525
real 0m0.177s
user 0m0.173s
sys 0m0.003s
Note that collatz function below, uses mutable STUArray internally, but itself is a pure function:
import Control.Monad.ST (ST)
import Control.Monad (mapM_)
import Control.Applicative ((<$>))
import Data.Array.Unboxed (UArray, elems)
import Data.Array.ST (STUArray, readArray, writeArray, runSTUArray, newArray)
collatz :: Int -> UArray Int Int
collatz size = out
where
next i = if odd i then 3 * i + 1 else i `div` 2
loop :: STUArray s Int Int -> Int -> ST s Int
loop arr k
| size < k = succ <$> loop arr (next k)
| otherwise = do
out <- readArray arr k
if out /= 0 then return out
else do
out <- succ <$> loop arr (next k)
writeArray arr k out
return out
out = runSTUArray $ do
arr <- newArray (1, size) 0
writeArray arr 1 1
mapM_ (loop arr) [2..size]
return arr
main = do
size <- read <$> getLine
print . maximum . elems $ collatz size
In order to perform range queries on this array, you may build a balanced tree as simple as below:
type Range = (Int, Int)
data Tree = Leaf Int | Node Tree Tree Range Int
build_tree :: Int -> Tree
build_tree size = loop 1 cnt
where
ctz = collatz size
cnt = head . dropWhile (< size) $ iterate (*2) 1
(Leaf a) +: (Leaf b) = max a b
(Node _ _ _ a) +: (Node _ _ _ b) = max a b
loop lo hi
| lo == hi = Leaf $ if size < lo then minBound else ctz ! lo
| otherwise = Node left right (lo, hi) (left +: right)
where
i = (lo + hi) `div` 2
left = loop lo i
right = loop (i + 1) hi
query_tree :: Tree -> Int -> Int -> Int
query_tree (Leaf x) _ _ = x
query_tree (Node l r (lo, hi) x) i j
| i <= lo && hi <= j = x
| mid < i = query_tree r i j
| j < 1 + mid = query_tree l i j
| otherwise = max (query_tree l i j) (query_tree r i j)
where mid = (lo + hi) `div` 2

Answer 2

Here is the same as in the other answer, but with an immutable recursively defined array (and it also leaks slightly (can someone say why?) and so two times slower):
import Data.Array
upper = 10^6
step :: Integer -> Int
step i = 1 + colAt (if odd i then 3 * i + 1 else i `div` 2)
colAt :: Integer -> Int
colAt i | i > upper = step i
colAt i = col!i
col :: Array Integer Int
col = array (1, upper) $ (1, 1) : [(i, step i) | i <- [2..upper]]
main = print $ maximum $ elems col