Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!uplherc!giga!unislc!scl From: scl@unislc.uucp (Sean Landis) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Compilers taking advantage of architectural enhancements Message-ID: <1990Oct17.164356.27702@unislc.uucp> Date: 17 Oct 90 16:43:56 GMT References: <1990Oct9> <3300194@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <336@fjcp60.GOV> Reply-To: scl@unislc.UUCP (Sean Landis,B2D10,3988) Organization: Unisys, Salt Lake City Lines: 19 In article <336@fjcp60.GOV> golds@fjcnet.GOV (Rich Goldschmidt) writes: >Maybe this is naive or too futuristic, but is anyone working towards >methods for automatically generating a compiler based on the architecture >design? > ...some text deleted... >-- >Rich Goldschmidt: uunet!fjcp60!golds or golds@fjc.gov There is a group at the University of Utah that was able (to some extent) generate compiler back-ends from an architectural description language (ADL). Really, if you use a well defined intermediate form, this is all you should require to take advantage of a particular architecture. I don't know the details, but it all seemed pretty slick to me. It's seems to me (I'm not a compiler expert) that a major problem would be the definition of the ADL. It must be robust enough to desribe the optimizable intricacies of all the architectures you might be interested in, while also being stable enough to be usable over time. Sean