[LLVMdev] Removal of IA-64 target

[Marcel Moolenaar]

On Jul 16, 2009, at 10:22 PM, Chris Lattner wrote:

>
>> However, I do not want to go anywhere near trying to achieve optimal
>> code generation right now. Getting functional completeness is as high
>> as I dare to shoot. I presume that it'll be daunting enough.
>
> It depends a lot on your background, but yes it is a substantial
> amount of work.

Low-level compiler optimizer team for Itanium at HP.

I'm not on foreign soil so to speak, but there are a few reasons for
me not to call it home ground. I moved out of compilers entirely and
into operating systems (I seem to have a love-hate relationship with
compilers -- not good for a professional carrier :-) ...

> Being dead in-and-of-itself doesn't mean it shouldn't have an LLVM
> backend: for example, I consider Alpha more-dead than Itanium :).

\begin{sidenote}
I don't consider Itanium dead. I think it had to be positioned
for such a niche market (after failing miserably to be the
replacement of x86 as it was first envisioned to be), that it
has become mostly insignificant.
\end{sidenote}

> However, maintaining an LLVM backend is a significant amount of work,
> and given that we've had an itanium backend since 2005 with no serious
> interest from developers-other-than-Duraid, I have a hard time
> believing that this will magically change in the near term.

*nod*

There's nothing to contradict this statement. My words are just
that right now.

> At this point, I think we should remove the Itanium backend from
> mainline.  I would be thrilled if you would take it and fix it up and
> get it working out of tree.  If you get it working on significant
> programs (regardless of the performance of those programs) we'd
> definitely accept it back in tree at that point.  Does this seem
> reasonable to you?

It's virtually impossible to be unreasonable when it's being
discussed like this.

I few administrative questions come to mind. I'll ask them
here, but feel free to have me take it offline:

1.  Were you thinking about a LLVM (sub-)project for this, or
     do you want me to take it off-site?
2.  If off-site: would a LLVM/ia64 project on SF.net be acceptable
     or do you prefer something less public (protecting the LLVM
     "brand" comes to mind)?

I'll watch the commit logs and when I see ia64 being axed, I'll pick
the latest release (2.5 right now, but maybe 2.6) and use that as
the basis for the work.

Cheers,

-- 
Marcel Moolenaar
xcllnt at mac.com