[LLVMdev] PTX target for LLVM?

[Sam Martin]

Hi,

 

(Disabling lurk mode)

 

I must admit, I believe this would be an extremely valuable addition to
llvm, to the point where I was also seriously considering writing this
backend. The main thing holding me back is the thought that other people
are almost certainly working on the same thing (probably including
nvidia)!

 

I assume it's not yet ready to publish, but it's worth remembering that
feedback from use of research in practice is a major plus point for any
thesis J. 

 

+1 for even a tarball please!

 

Ta,

Sam

 

From: llvmdev-bounces at cs.uiuc.edu [mailto:llvmdev-bounces at cs.uiuc.edu]
On Behalf Of llvmdev at erichocean.oib.com
Sent: 28 March 2010 15:40
To: llvmdev at cs.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: [LLVMdev] PTX target for LLVM?

 

To the list:

Tons of LLVM research is being done that is damn near worthless to
anyone but the person who did it because the team doesn't publish
supporting code or even describe at a high level description of the
algorithms they're using. And the excuse is always, ALWAYS the same: "we
need to clean up the code before we release it."

No! Just put a repository up (or make a tarball)! This is open source.
Code is never perfect, so just put it out there with the same BSD-style
license as LLVM. Every programmer can read code, even bad code,
especially when there's a research paper or thesis to go along with it.
Every delay in releasing code just slows down the progress of the the
world. That's the only "benefit": slowing the progress of other
researchers. If the code is needed to replicate your research, for the
love of Turing *publish it alongside the research*.

Look, the LLVM project has already set a great example with its
permissive BSD license and all LLVM development is done out in the open;
I see (and read) every commit. The rest of us need to get with the
program and follow suit. If you publish research built on top of LLVM,
please,*please*, PLEASE at least make a tarball of the source code
available alongside the research so the rest of us can view it, build on
it, and improve it.

Thanks!

Best, Erich Ocean

P.s. I too would like access to a PTX backend for LLVM. :-)

On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Ralf Karrenberg (Chareos at gmx.de) wrote:
> 
> Hey,
> 
> Chris Lattner schrieb: 
> > On Mar 26, 2010, at 11:28 PM, Puyan Lotfi wrote: 
> > 
> >> Hi 
> >> 
> >> I am interested to know: are there are any LLVM targets in the
works 
> >> for Nvidia's PTX ISA? 
> >> 
> >> Also if anyone knows about Ocelot (a project done by some students
at 
> >> my school): it does the opposite of what I am trying to do
(translates 
> >> PTX to LLVM IR to run Cuda kernels on the CPU). 
> > 
> > I don't know of any, but that would be a great project if the nvidia
toolchain is sufficiently available for it to be useful to open source
folks.
> 
> Helge Rhodin, a student at Saarland University, has already written a 
> PTX backend for LLVM as part of his bachelor's thesis. We currently
use 
> it for a deferred shading system of a rasterizer. 
> The plan is to reintegrate it into the LLVM trunk, but we have not yet

> made any steps into this direction.
> 
> Best regards, 
> Ralf 
> _______________________________________________ 
> LLVM Developers mailing list 
> LLVMdev at cs.uiuc.edu http://llvm.cs.uiuc.edu 
> http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/llvmdev 
> 

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