Strong Call by Value is Reasonable for Time

Abstract: The invariance thesis of Slot and van Emde Boas states that all reasonable models of computation simulate each other with polynomially bounded overhead in time and constant-factor overhead in space. In this paper we show that a family of strong call-by-value strategies in the $\lambda$-calculus are reasonable for time. The proof is based on a construction of an appropriate abstract machine, systematically derived using Danvy et al.'s functional correspondence that connects higher-order interpreters with abstract-machine models by a well-established transformation technique. This is the first machine that implements a strong CbV strategy and simulates $\beta$-reduction with the overhead polynomial in the number of $\beta$-steps and in the size of the initial term. We prove this property using a form of amortized cost analysis `a la Okasaki.