Re: Compiler back-ends [Q]

pardo@cs.washington.edu (David Keppel)
Wed, 25 Oct 1995 15:59:46 GMT

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Related articles
Compiler back-ends [Q] Ben.Sloman@reading.ac.uk (1995-10-21)
Re: Compiler back-ends [Q] cliffc@ami.sps.mot.com (1995-10-23)
Re: Compiler back-ends [Q] pardo@cs.washington.edu (1995-10-25)
Re: Compiler back-ends [Q] jgj@ssd.hcsc.com (1995-10-27)
Re: Compiler back-ends [Q] collberg@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (1995-10-29)
Re: Compiler back-ends [Q] Martin.Jourdan@inria.fr (1995-11-03)
Re: Compiler back-ends [Q] sc@iaxp01.inf.uni-jena.de (Sebastian Schmidt) (1995-11-03)
Re: Compiler back-ends [Q] cliffc@ami.sps.mot.com (1995-11-03)
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Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: pardo@cs.washington.edu (David Keppel)
Keywords: code
Organization: Computer Science & Engineering, U. of Washington, Seattle
References: 95-10-099 95-10-114
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 15:59:46 GMT

>Ben.Sloman@reading.ac.uk (Ben Sloman) writes:
>> `the back-ends of most production compilers are generated automatically'
>> True or false? On what grounds (examples/references appreciated)?
>> ...
>> [I'll eat my hat if it's true. -John]


In 95-10-114 cliffc@ami.sps.mot.com (Cliff Click) writes:
>[`lcc', `gcc', TI compilers, Motorola compilers.]


Not to forget the Greenhills compilers, which use a proprietary machine
description and have been ported to a variety of systems including x86
and KSR1.


FWIW (though this hardly counts as ``most''), I've heard a rumor that
SunSoft has, for several years now, tuned their schedulers using an
automated system rather like Henry Baker's ``Precise Scheduling Without
a Machine Model''. According to rumor, the scheduler executes a suite
of benchmarks, trying each benchmark a variety of scheduling options
and tuning to those options that provide the best measured performance.
They iterate through this several times across a variety of machines,
eventually selecting the option that provides the best overall speedups
without substantially hurting code quality on other Sun platforms. At
least that's the rumor I heard.


(Fortunately, John's hat is made of bread and the strings of Pasta.)


;-D oN ( The back-ends justify the means ) Pardo
--


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