[llvm-dev] LLVM Backend for a platform with no (normal) stack

[Bruce Hoult via llvm-dev]

On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 6:31 AM Mendell, Mark P <mark.p.mendell at intel.com>
wrote:

> Not only do FPGAs not support recursion, we don’t even support calls!
> *All* user code must be inlined into one kernel/component, which is then
> used to create HDL for the FPGA.
>

That's an implementation choice. Verilog allows you to use recursion to
generate complex structured circuits. Of course, it's all just inlined and
the recursions have to hit bottom during that process.

Do you also insist on no loops, or at least only loops with explicit fixed
trip counts? What about AREF?

I've worked on a GPU back end for llvm where we inlined all function calls
into each shader/kernel. That was convenient, but only ever as a stop-gap
and OpenCL 1.2 lets you get away with that.

On very restricted machines it's often easier to create a simple
interpreter using the native features and then target your actual program
at the interpreter. It's slower, of course, but much more flexible. This
applies equally as much to FPGAs as it did to things like the 6502 forty
years ago where most programming was done in either tokenised BASIC or else
Pascal compiled to bytecode (or even SWEET16). Every day I use an FPGA
programmed to interpret RISC-V opcodes and it supports not only function
calls and stacks and recursion, it's running a full Debian Linux as quickly
as an early Pentium or PowerPC did.

Depending on the performance needs, an interpreter might be a good option
for the OP.
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