[gambit-list] gambit + llvm

David Rush kumoyuki at gmail.com
Mon Sep 22 18:45:48 EDT 2008


On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 8:19 PM, Marc Feeley <feeley at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> I haven't looked at LLVM since its first release, and following your
> post I took a new look

As have I. I am glad of the reminder.

> For fun I tried compiling Gambit with llvm-gcc on my Mac OS X machine
...
> The good news is that this works
...
> The bad news is that the compile time is really high (10 minutes for
> some of the larger C files like lib/_num.c and lib/_io.c) and the
> execution speed if often lower than when using the standard gcc.

Well a custom back-end would be using Gambit's high-level
optimizations and LLVM's low-level ones. I wouldn't be at all
surprised if the use of C as an intermediate language (however
stylized) introduces inefficiencies.

> If anyone is interested in contributing to implement an LLVM back-end
> for Gambit, please send me an email.  I can guide you through the
> steps required.

I am indirectly interested, and may become actively so depending on
what happens in the next couple of months (waiting on funding :)
Please keep the list posted if anyone steps up.

david rush
-- 
GPG Public key at http://cyber-rush.org/drr/gpg-public-key.txt



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