Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!zehntel!dual!amd!pesnta!hplabs!hao!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!Mark.Tucker@cmu-cs-gandalf.arpa From: Mark.Tucker@cmu-cs-gandalf.arpa Newsgroups: net.lang.c Subject: Re: Better Optimiziers? Message-ID: <6381@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Wed, 5-Dec-84 17:00:05 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.6381 Posted: Wed Dec 5 17:00:05 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 7-Dec-84 05:53:32 EST Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 20 Yes, its a shame that anyone who wants better code than the portable c compiler wants to give you has to start from scratch. A recent CACM talked about the Amsterdam compiler kit. They claim to build machine independent optimizers and machine dependent code generators for a nice tree-based intermediate language. Their intermediate representation is designed for optimization. I'd like to see a completely public domain C compiler built with their system. By starting with their stuff, you wouldn't need to worry about breaking 'old reliable.' Another publicly availible optimizer is PO, written by Jack Davidson (now at the University of Virginia). It takes register-transfer-level code descriptions and does nice value propogation / common sub-expression elimination. Unfortunately, it's slow, and doesn't work with trees, but seems to be easily retargeted to other machines. -- Mark Tucker