[LLVMdev] LLVM in place of Dalvik on Android

[Eli Friedman]

On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 7:23 PM, Tyler Hardin <tghardin1 at catamount.wcu.edu>wrote:

> Hi all, does anyone here know if Google has considered trading out the
> Dalvik VM for LLVM?
>
> What specifically I have in mind is that apps could be compiled to LLVM IR
> and distributed (after optimization) in that form, and then compiled to
> machine code on the Android machine itself. This would leave only ISA
> optimizations to the Android machine.
>
> It would seem, from my limited perspective, that statically compiling
> packages containing LLVM IR would be superior to JITing Dalvik code every
> time an application is ran.
>
> In addition to all code only having to be compiled once, when compiling
> statically, there is usually less rush and thus more time for
> computationally intensive optimizations.
>
> What is the list's opinion on this?
>
Please try to ask specific questions; vague/hypothetical questions aren't
going to lead to useful discussion.

In answer to the question "can apps be compiled to LLVM IR and distributed
in that form", it's workable in restricted environments; try searching the
web for "Portable Native Client".

-Eli
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20130902/d973d0dd/attachment.html>