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From: schoenfr@tubsibr.uucp (Erik Schoenfelder)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
Subject: Re: GNU C for the transputer
Message-ID: <1989Oct17.224226.21055@tubsibr.uucp>
Date: 17 Oct 89 22:42:26 GMT
References: <[A.ISI.EDU]13-Oct-89.18:17:43.ENGLE>
Reply-To: schoenfr@tubsibr.UUCP (Erik Schoenfelder)
Organization: TU Braunschweig, W. Germany
Lines: 28

In article <[A.ISI.EDU]13-Oct-89.18:17:43.ENGLE> Steven Engle writes:

Steven>	Does anyone have any information on a version of GNU C for
Steven>	the transputer.  Does GNU C work on stack based machines?

Interesting question. I found the following in the GCC documentation :

GCC>  	The main goal of GNU CC was to make a good, fast compiler for
GCC>  	machines in the class that the GNU system aims to run on: 32-bit
GCC>  	machines that address 8-bit bytes and have several general registers.
GCC>  	Elegance, theoretical power and simplicity are only secondary.

				[gcc.info: ``GNU CC and Portability'']

The `several general registers' seem to be a problem. The
transputer does not have them.

An idea is to use the fast built-in memory of the transputer like
registers (with a accesstime between 1 cycle and 5 (?) cycles).
(Nice idea: It will be possible to get the address of a register variable :-)
But this results in a compiler for a (virtual) processor based on
the transputer-processor.

But i don't know if anyone is working on a port, or if a port is
possible ...

-- Erik