[LLVMdev] Google's Go

[Owen Anderson]

On Nov 12, 2009, at 10:25 AM, Edward O'Callaghan wrote:

> No, its up to them which backend they want to use.
> Sounds like they think that GCC is super quick compared to LLVM. Looks
> like another fud fart out of google to me.

Actually, after chatting with Ian about it, it's more of a case of the FAQ being poorly worded than them being anti-LLVM.

If you read it closely, it says that LLVM was too slow for 6g, which is their ultra-fast, non-optimizing implementation based on the Plan9 compilers.  In this case, the assertion that LLVM is slow is correct: it's definitely slower than a non-optimizing compiler.  They then later implemented an optimizing implementation, which they based on GCC because they had a team member (Ian) who is a GCC expert.

On the positive side, Ian seemed very positive and even encouraging that his GCCGo frontend might be retargettable from GCC to LLVM, so I wouldn't rule it out as a possibility if some interested community members stepped up to do it.

--Owen
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