[LLVMdev] 9 Ideas To Better Support Source Language Developers

Reid Spencer reid at x10sys.com
Wed Jan 7 23:28:01 PST 2004


My $0.02 worth on this topic ..

I'm also interested in distributed computing as XPL/XPS will support it.
However, I find it unreasonable to expect LLVM to provide any features
in this area.  In order to do anything meaningful, LLVM would have to
have some kind of awareness of networks (typically an operating system
concern).  That seems at odds with the "low level" principles of LLVM. 

Valery, could you be more explicit about what kind of features in LLVM
would support distributed computing? How would code evaluation
distributed to multiple hosts benefit anyone? The two programs only
communicate via a network connection. The only places you can optimize
that network connection are in (a) the kernel and (b) the application.
Case (a) is outside the scope of LLVM and case (b) is supported by LLVM
today.  I assume this is obvious so what else were you thinking?

Reid. 

On Wed, 2004-01-07 at 16:00, Chris Lattner wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Valery A.Khamenya wrote:
> > Wednesday, January 7, 2004, 9:37:19 PM, you wrote:
> >
> > Well, Chris, let's forget about traditions (finally LLVM is
> > tradition-breaking thing!). At which level the optimization like i've
> > meant *should* be implemented?..
> 
> Ok, I thought you were concerned about LLVM breaking the _correctness_ of
> distributed programs, sorry.  :)
> 
> > If a priori optimization is restricted to a one host, then nothing to
> > discuss. But just imagine that you say: "OK, let's make a basic
> > support for code eval distributed to multiple hosts" :)
> >   2. LLVM could bring a *lot* to distributed computing, if distributed
> >      computing will be a *part* of LLVM concept.
> 
> Sure, that makes sense.  It's quite possible that there are things that
> make sense to move down to the LLVM level, exposing all kinds of neat
> opportunities.  If you'd like to look into this, that would be cool!  :)
> 
> -Chris
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20040107/29a90bea/attachment.sig>


More information about the llvm-dev mailing list