[LLVMdev] Fw: Thinking about "whacky" backends

[Henry Mason]

On May 31, 2011, at 7:36 PM, Samuel Crow wrote:
<snip>
>> 
>> Now my idea for a whacky backend:  Just a wrapper of the bitcode writer with its 
>> own special target triple:  bitcode-tarrget-neutral and a generic data layout 
>> that aligns to single bytes as a placeholder only.  It should disallow 
>> overriding the alignment of individual instructions to avoid illegal settings 
>> for the data layout.  When compiling it with LLC, it should require that the 
>> target triple and data layout be overridden by a real processor and OS.  This 
>> would allow LLVM to actually function as a statically compiled virtual machine 
>> when used in conjunction with my wrapper of the LibC runtimes.  Of course the 
>> wrapper code would allow special inlining as it would be the only interface to 
>> the underlying OS.
>> 
>> What do you think of my whacky backend idea?

This is pretty much what's happening with Portable Native Client, right?

http://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl

See also the first presentation from the November LLVM meeting: http://llvm.org/devmtg/2010-11/

-Henry