Summary: Commercial front-ends and optimizers

Last month, I asked about front-ends and optimizers that are available,
here is the summary. Some of the comments are verbatim, many have been
heavily summarised/edited. I have no relationship with any of the people
or companies mentioned here (except for my employer being a likely
future customer)




Free stuff
============


1) The ubiquitous GCC (for C, C++ and ObjC), Fortran 77 and Ada. Their
      "copyleft" places restriction on distribution. Supported by various
      companies, notably Cygnus.




2) PCCTS
                If you want a free very clean C frontend, take a look at
                ftp.parr-research.com in pub/pccts/contrib/ansi.tar. That is
                the ftp site for PCCTS--the set of compiler tools of which I'm
                the primary author. PCCTS is a cool set of tools if you'd like
                to take a look.


                I can mail you the PostScript of a summary paper to be published
                in Soft. Pract. & Experience.


                Terence 'parrt@parr-research.com'




Commercial stuff, direct from the vendors
=========================================




3) Information Analysis Inc. -- COBOL parser


                We at Information Analysis Inc. can throw in COBOL parser
                that's fairly good and tested on large programs from at least
                10 different shops. If you are interested, let me know and we
                can discuss details.


                Vadim Maslov 'vadik@cs.UMD.edu'




4) Edison Design Group -- front ends for C/C++ Fortran 77


                Edison Design Group is a corporation dedicated to developing and
                licensing compiler front ends. We are noteworthy because our
front ends have the features, reliability, and efficiency
required in commercial compilers; we back our software with
outstanding support; and our license fees and sublicensing
policies are reasonable.


                The source code is written in a portable dialect of C. Host and
                target computer characteristics (e.g., command-line interface,
                integer sizes, floating-point representation) are carefully
                separated from the main body of the code so that they can be
easily changed for rehosting or retargeting. The front ends
can be used as part of a cross-compiler. There is extensive
internal debugging and assertion-checking code, which can be
included or excluded through conditional compilation options.


                We also have a relationship with Kuck & Associates, which will
be selling optimization components that work with our C/C++
front end.


                Steve Adamczyk
                Edison Design Group
                jsa@edg.com
                201-744-2620


                Mentioned and recommanded by:
                        milt@Eng.Sun.com
                        Bill.Leonard@mail.csd.harris.com
                        ryer@dsd.camb.inmet.com




5) MetaWare Inc -- C/C++, Fortran, Pascal


                MetaWare has a C/C++ front end written in High C (using
iterators), and backends for many architectures. We have many
prominent OEMs, such as AT&T, IBM, AMD, etc.


                Our front-end (which is not a Cfront derivative) handles both
                C and C++. We also have front-ends for Pascal and FORTRAN. Our
                front-end, procedure inliner, and backend are separate programs
                that communicate via disk files, which makes it easier to mate
                other front ends onto our backend. MetaWare has one of the best
                optimizers in the business. We look forward to hearing from you.




                Franklin L. DeRemer, Ph.D.
                CEO & Vice-President, Business Development
                MetaWare Incorporated (408) 429-6382 Phone
                2161 Delaware Avenue (408) 429-9273 FAX
                Santa Cruz, CA 95060-5706 frank@metaware.com




6) Datenverarbeitung -- many parsers


                What my company has to offer is:


                Product Description


                cobol85 Parser for COBOL 85
                cobol Parser for COBOL (Union of IBM, Micro Focus, ANSI 85)
                                            including construction of syntax tree
                pl1 Parser for PL/I and PL/I-preprocessor
                                            including construction of syntax tree
                ftn90 Parser for Fortran 90
                ftn77 Parser for Fortran 77
                eiffel Parser for Eiffel 3
                                            including construction of syntax tree


                Also available are parsers for:
                            Ada, C, Modula-2, Modula-3, Oberon, Oberon-2, Occam,
                            Pascal, Sather, SQL


                All compiler pieces are implemented in C. They are generated
with the Cocktail Toolbox for Compiler Construction.


                Dr. Josef Grosch


                Datenverarbeitung
                Hagsfelder Allee 16
                D-76131 Karlsruhe
                Germany


                Tel.: +49-721-697061
                Fax : +49-721-661966
                Mail: grosch@cocolab.sub.com




7) Intermetics, Inc. -- C/C++ and Ada tools


                We saw your recent posting in comp.compilers. Intermetrics
markets a line of standard cross development tools (C/C++ and
Ada). We also have a large OEM business where we provide our
technology to companies who need compiler technology.


                One area of speciality is compilers for DSPs. We have developed
                a set of front end language extensions for things like circular
                buffers and fixed point data types.


                We regularly license source and provide redistribution rights.


                Rachael M. Rusting
                Intermetrics, Inc.
                (617)661-1840 (voice)
                (617)868-2843 (fax)
                rmr@inmet.camb.inmet.com




8) Metrowerks Inc. -- C/C++ and Pascal compilers


                We currently have 13,000 registered users using our 68K- and
Power Mac-hosted C, C++ and Pascal compilers for these two
platforms. Almost all of the native apps on the new Power
Macintosh have been ported using our products.




                Jean Belanger
                Chairman,
                Metrowerks Inc.
                belanger@austin.metrowerks.com




9) Archelon Inc. -- C frontend and compiler


                My company, called Archelon Inc., has been in the business of
doing compiler work for the last twelve years or so. We have an
ANSI C front end which we use for our products. Our latest
product is a user retargetable development system, which
includes a user retargetable C compiler. The user does the
retarget by writing a text file of 1500-2000 lines. This file
is read in by the compiler every time it runs.


                R. Preston Gurd Archelon Inc.
                President 460 Forestlawn Road
                (519)746-7925 Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
                rpgurd@watcgl.uwaterloo.ca N2K 2J6




10) Nullstone Corporation -- compiler tools


                We market a product called Nullstone, an automated compiler
                performance analysis tool, which is licensed by companies that
                develop compilers and companies that OEM compiler technology.


                Christopher Glaeser
                Nullstone Corporation
                cdg@nullstone.com




11) Kuck & Associates, Inc. -- optimizers for C/C++, Fortran


                They provide a range of optimizers, frontents, libraries and
will interface to any intermediate languages and data
structures. Their new C/C++ optimizer is coupled to the EDG
frontend. They also provide complete preprocessors.


                kuhn@kai.com
                (217) 356-2288




Commercial stuff, pointers only
===============================




12) the former Multiflow


                Multiflow died (some years ago) but produced a small compiler
                company that sells FORTRAN and C compilers with Very Optimizing
                back ends. I don't have a contact offhand but if you don't get
                any other leads let me know and I'll dig something up. The
                compilers are slow, the code quality is good, the internal level
                of abstraction in the compiler is good (easing modifications),
                it's not free, and I don't know how manyback-ends they support.
                                pardo@cs.washington.edu




13) Enfield


                From what I hear, a company called "Enfield" has very good
                quality front ends. The cost is supposedly around $60,000, the
                last time we checked.
                                deepak@oakhill-csic.sps.mot.com




14) ETH -- Oberon compiler


                The ETH sells the source for their Oberon compiler. Oberon is a
                a pascal-like language designed by N. Wirth. It is a successor
                to pascal. It extends pascal with seperate compilation, modules,
                type-extension and type-bound procedures ( aka classes ), and
                other post-pascal things such as open arrays, etc. In short,
                Oberon has all the basic building blocks of a programming and
                those that are missing would be easy to construct. The compiler
                for the language is very small ( an order of magnitude smaller
                than GCC ) reflecting both good design principles and the modest
                size of the Oberon language.


                See the Oberon FAQ on rtfm.mit.edu for details
                                whitney@christie.Meakins.McGill.ca




15) Apogee


                contact ceo George Malek at malek@apogee.com
                                SAND_DUANE@tandem.com




16) Edinburgh Portable Compilers LTD


                of Edinburgh UK with branch office in Scotts Valley CA;
                contact ceo Geoff Millard at geoff@epc.ed.ac.uk
                                SAND_DUANE@tandem.com




17) Microtec (of Santa Clara? Sunnyvale? CA)
                                SAND_DUANE@tandem.com




18) Tartan Labs near Carnegie Mellon
                founded by Wm. Wulf. Primarily does development tools
                for military embedded systems.
                                SAND_DUANE@tandem.com




19) Green Hills Software,
                acquired by Oasys. No current address
                                SAND_DUANE@tandem.com




20) Peritus International Inc of Cupertino CA,
                acquired by ???.
                                SAND_DUANE@tandem.com


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