Mill Computing, Inc. Forums The Mill Tools Compilers Status of LLVM compiler toolchain

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  • marvin
    Participant
    Post count: 1
    #1711 |

    Hi,

    I was wondering if you could give a status update regarding the LLVM compiler backend. Both if/when it will be available, but also at which state it is at the moment. Nothing overly length, just to get an idea of the level of maturity it is currently at.

    If you could also briefly discuss the Mill specific compilation problems that have been solved and the ones that remain challenging (possibly due to the use of LLVM), this would be great.

    Thank you in advance,

    an interesting reader

  • Will_Edwards
    Moderator
    Post count: 98

    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 😀

  • LarryP
    Participant
    Post count: 78

    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_Edwards
      Moderator
      Post count: 98

      I feel mean holding back from giving you all a proper status update… but I’m not going to spoil Ivan’s keynote at the LLVM conf in London Tues 14th April 🙂

      http://llvm.org/devmtg/2015-04/ not sure the time slot. The announcement will be going out on the mailing list too of course 🙂

      Sorry I haven’t spilled the beans on the current LLVM status 😀

  • LarryP
    Participant
    Post count: 78

    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!)

    • Will_Edwards
      Moderator
      Post count: 98

      (We’ve been caught out with lack of videos before in Norway, Denmark and Estonia so we’re going to record Amsterdam and London ourselves as backup!)

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