[gambit-list] compiling fib
Marc Feeley
feeley at iro.umontreal.ca
Mon Jan 24 10:16:16 EST 2011
On 2011-01-22, at 5:13 PM, Bradley Lucier wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-01-21 at 15:08 -0500, Marc Feeley wrote:
>>
>> On 2011-01-21, at 2:44 PM, Raffael Cavallaro wrote:
>>
>>> Any chance of an ARM back end?
>>
>> ARM would be the logical next back-end to write. But there are no plans for that yet.
>
> Marc:
>
> You have not suggested this, but ...
>
> I would REALLY, REALLY, REALLY not like to see the C back end become
> some kind of second-class citizen because of all this work. I have not
> been following closely the development of other Scheme systems, but my
> impression is that the C back ends of some of them are something of an
> afterthought.
There are no plans to make the C back-end a second-class citizen! The C back-end has great value for its portability. The Gambit compiler will include the C back-end and native back-ends simultaneously, so that it is easy to switch between them. The compiler will certainly be distributed as C files (produced by the C back-end) so that Gambit can be built on any platform and will behave consistently on all platforms.
> Also, I would prefer that general improvements be made to the compiler,
> rather than relying on the (partial) speedup (on some things) that
> compiling directly to assembler gives.
The fact is that some important performance issues are related to the C back-end. Resolving these issues can't be done by modifying the front-end. Of course improvements to the front-end will benefit all variants of Gambit (C and native back-ends).
Marc
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