>>>>> Alexey Starovoytov writes:
> If Sun starts improving GCC backend now it will never be able to catch up
> with Sun's own backend.
This is a completely ridiculous assertion. Do you have any
evidence to back this up? There is no reason that GCC could not intercept
Sun CC if some effort were made. SPARC is not that different from other
RISC architectures that GCC supports well. If Sun wants to protect its
compiler business, that is fine, but it is a business decision, not a
technical decision.
> When you're a company like Intel with a relatively small gap between gcc
> on x86 and icl, it's worth improving the gcc backend, but on Sparc
> the gap is much wider, so the effort to bridge it may not be justified
> from a resource point of view.
Has anyone at Sun investigated and analyzed the source of the gap
relative to a recent version of GCC? If Sun does not want to cooperate
with the Free Software community, that may be a reasonable business
decision, but at least provide the real explanation or do not say anything
instead of excuses.
David
