Status of LLVM compiler toolchain

We haven’t hit any major architectural problems with LLVM. We can take LLVM IR and pretty much find-replace it to our genAsm format.

We are doing some work in LLVM around tracking pointers specially, but this is not on our critical path.

The LLVM backend will be available shortly. Its actually working in a very basic fashion already, but nowhere near settled-down enough to be made available. Its growing features and fixes continuously. Its only useful in conjunction with our simulator and such.

But we are as eager to share it with the world as the world is eager to get its hands on it 😀

Will, Ivan, et al:

Could you (if the IP issues permit) give us any more detail on the LLVM-for-Mill port and its status? In at least one of Ivan’s presentations, Ivan indicated that “major surgery” was needed to make LLVM compile Mill code, because LLVM assumed a register-machine target, which the Mill is not. Will’s statement seems to say the port is well in hand, but says nothing about how or what you had to change to accomplish that. If that “major surgery” succeeded (or was handled in another way), telling the community of that significant success would IMHO help community confidence and probably ditto for prospective investors.

Of course, a talk on the toolchain — preferably including a demo of the compiler, specializer and simulator — would be fantastic! — though I know you guys are very busy. IMHO, the only thing better would be an alpha release of the toolchain and simulator! Please, tell us what you safely can, as soon as you can.

Thanks,

Larry

Will,

Thanks for the info about a talk just a few weeks away. Such a talk, especially a keynote address at the LLVM conference, strongly implies some good news coming! 😉

I hope you folks can get materials from that talk online ASAP! Personally, I’d be happy to see the slides sooner by themselves, rather than having to wait for an edited video. Will Millcomputing be getting audio/video recording(s) of Ivan’s keynote? (Hope so!)