[LLVMdev] [LAD] Project proposition: llvm based dsp engine

[Paul Davis]

On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 6:10 AM, Maurizio De Cecco <jmax at dececco.name> wrote:
> I have been looking for a while to  LLVM as a possible technology to build a
> DSP execution engine, providing the runtime flexibility needed by real-time
> interactive DSP applications (like patcher languages), or by plug-in based
> processors, and in the same moment
> the powerful link time optimizations that such a system can provide.

My own gut feeling on this is that you'd be better off figuring out
how to do this in the context of Faust, which already does a important
subset of what you are describing, though notably without (I think)
the LLVM part.

Note also that hosts which run plugins at the level of LADSPA/LV2,
VST, AU, DSSI etc are unlikely to be easy candidates for any
cross-plugin optimization. I can say for sure that, for example,
Ardour3 has an object called a Processor whose ::run() method
encapsulates all DSP done within Ardour, but nevertheless it would be
more or less impossible to do any kind of optimization that looked
"across" all the Processors in a signal chain (eg. gain, pan, plugins,
etc, etc).

--p