[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Although many of us are involved, or have been involved, with other
compiler projects, the focus of the Gelato GCC Improvement Group is to
work *with* the GCC community *and* the GCC community *process* to
improve GCC for Itanium.
Some of the other projects which individuals are currently, or have
been, involved with include OpenIMPACT <www.gelato.uiuc.edu>, ORC
<ipf-orc.sourceforge.net>, icc
<www.intel.com/cd/software/products/asmo-na/eng/compilers/219760.htm>,
LLVM <llvm.cs.uiuc.edu>, and a new initiative to produce a hybrid
compiler based on the GCC front-end and the ORC back-end. (HP will
present on this HP-led project in the general session at the next
Gelato meeting.)
It would be interesting to know more details about the hybrid compiler.
- Will the backend use RTL, Tree-SSA or will the backend be just ORC
backend with its IL?
- If it is just ORC backend with own IL, who will support the hybrid
compiler or you hope that gcc community will support two backends (ORC
one for Itanium and gcc backend for other architectures)?
- If you want to see the hybrid compiler as a part of gcc project, how
are you going to solve the copyright problem? As I know, although ORC
code is also distributed under GNU license, the copyright belongs to
SGI. All code developed under gcc project should belong to FSF. Will
SGI give up the copyright to FSF?
So, if the hybrid compiler will use ORC backend as it exists, I am quite
skeptical that the project will be viable. It will be just another
research compiler, the users need an industrial compiler like gcc.
There are a lot of technical problems too with usage of ORC backend (GCC
supports many extensions like asm and languages).
The ORC backend optimizations proven to work for Itanium could be
rewritten for RTL with usage of existing gcc infrastructure, added to
gcc and could be used for other ports. I think it is more right way to do.
Vlad
