[LLVMdev] Google SOC - Idea

[Kenneth Hoste]

Hi Scott,

On 18 Mar 2007, at 04:22, Scott Fortmann-Roe wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I noticed that LLVM had signed up as a mentoring organization for
> Google's summer of code. LLVM looks like an exciting project that
> overlaps some of my interests.
>
> I would be interested in developing an additional front end for a
> language it does not currently support (I'm open to what language). I
> do not know much about what this entails in regards to what LLVM
> requires from its front ends. But I have experience with the ANTLR
> parser generator that looks like it could be used to generate such a
> front end.
>

Recently, there has been work done on a Fortran frontend.  
Unfortunately, it was abandonded because of the switch the LLVM team  
is currently making to a new bytecode format and, afaik, a new GCC  
version in the near future. The rub is that the gfortran part of GCC  
4.0 isn't really mature, but the ones in 4.1 and the upcoming 4.2 are.

I think getting a Fortran frontend working will highly benefit the  
relevance of LLVM for researchers. Quite a few of the SPEC CPU2000  
and CPU2006 benchmarks are fully or partially written in Fortran, and  
the SPEC benchmarks remain by far the most important benchmarks used  
in computer architecture and compiler-related research. Allowing all  
of the SPEC CPU200x benchmarks to compile using LLVM will vastly  
increase it's use imho.

greetings,

Kenneth

> Are you folks interested in this?
>
> If so, please let me know ASAP and I'll put together an application.
>
> -Scott
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-- 

Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but  
what they conceal is vital (Aaron Levenstein)

Kenneth Hoste
ELIS - Ghent University
kenneth.hoste at elis.ugent.be
http://www.elis.ugent.be/~kehoste