[LLVMdev] PowerPC Back End announcement

[Nate Begeman]

Hi Everyone!

We are pleased to announce the impending checkin to CVS of the PowerPC 
/ MachO backend for LLVM.  Many thanks go out to all the LLVM 
developers for their help in making this happen.  Misha Brukman and 
Chris Lattner will be handling the CVS integration in the near future.

The PowerPC BE current compiles most of the testsuite correctly.  There 
are known issues in C++, variable sized alloca, and unsigned 64 bit to 
floating point conversion.  Almost all other code will compile 
correctly, and will run with decent performance.  The current range for 
most integer programs is 0.7 to 1.5 times the performance of native 
GCC.  A Readme file containing the current to-do list will be checked 
in along with the source.  All you need to run the output of the back 
end is a PowerPC machine running either Mac OS X 10.3, or Darwin 7.x.  
Compatibility with Mac OS X 10.2 has not been tested.

Over the coming months, Misha, Louis and I hope to fix all remaining 
code correctness issues, and implement improvements such as target 
scheduling.  Once again, thanks to all the LLVM folks for answering 
questions and lending a hand along the way, and we look forward to your 
feedback and contributions!

Sincerely,
The PPC Backend Team
Nate Begeman
Misha Brukman
Louis Gerbarg