Compilers taking advantage of architectural enhancements

      Ah, a potentially interesting and useful topic. Perhaps we can start
      a discussion that will lead to a list of possible hardware
      architectural enhancements that a compiler can/cannot take advantage
      of?


Part of the trouble with this idea is that "what hardware can be taken
advantage of" changes over time. For instance, I believe that the Cray-1 was
out for a number of years before people had developed good vectorizing
compilers -- since vector hardware hadn't existed, there was no incentive to
figure out how to build a compiler that took advantage of it! This leads to
a chicken-and-egg problem -- the compiler doesn't exist because no hardware
needs it, and vice-versa. The correct solution was mentioned by somebody --
develop both in parallel and tune the combination of the two for best price &
performance. Of course, it means you have to fund both a hardware effort and
a software effort!


Dale Worley Compass, Inc. worley@compass.com
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