[LLVMdev] Google SOC - Idea

[Kenneth Hoste]

On 19 Mar 2007, at 13:33, Kenneth Hoste wrote:

> 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.

Some additional benefits which I forgot to mention:

- Creating a fully functional Fortran frontend would allow evaluation  
of the current LLVM optimizations on Fortran-based code. Maybe there  
are additional possibilities here which haven't been identified for C/ 
C++-based code.

- Supporting Fortran would allow new possibilities for mixed-language  
programmed programs (for example, some of the SPEC CPU2006  
benchmarks): bits from both languages can be mutually optimized. This  
might open gateways to faster code for these SPEC benchmarks, which  
no other compiler can reach...

K.

-- 

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