"SproutCore, profiled earlier this week, isn't the only big news spill out from the top secret WWDC conference due to Apple's embrace of open source sharing. Another future technology featured by the Mac maker last week was LLVM, the Low Level Virtual Machine compiler infrastructure project. Like SproutCore, LLVM is neither new nor secret, but both have been hiding from attention due to a thick layer of complexity that has obscured their future potential."
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Member since:2006-01-24
Yes, llvm is looking really promising. But seriously, statements like -"Sources report that LLVM-GCC "compiles code that consistently runs 33% faster" than code output from GCC." is obviously not true. No matter how good LLVM is there's no way it will consistently output code that is 33% faster, in reality it won't do that other than in extreme cases. Unfortunately there were no mention of what these 'sources' were.
Unlike the GNU toolchain which strains under the pressure of being the de facto compiler on which nearly the entire open source spectrum depends, llvm is a perfect testbed for new and exciting techniques in code generation. Once it matures it will provide a great alternative to the GNU toolchain and hopefully this will mean we get real competition in the oss compiler arena.
Member since:2005-07-06
That, and the fact that the gcc-llvm front end is going to be replaced with a new one, it'll be interesting to see what the future will be. Its great to have a compiler which is not only going to give gcc some competition but also provide a compiler which is BSD licenced.
Member since:2005-07-11
Unfortunately there were no mention of what these 'sources' were.
Agreed, if you are ever watching the news (esp. Fox and the like) and they use the term "sources" or some other vague term of reference, then it's is something they are adding themselves... It is as reliable as going to a tech psychic (see analyst) and asking them.
Sources say Apple will come out with Ice Leopard a year after Snow Leopard, which will add hologram technology, ZFS++, OpenDirectX and HAL9000 technologies...
The reason we take "sources" as fact is that we want to believe it, OK, maybe not the OpenDirectX - lol...
Edited 2008-06-21 00:28 UTC
Member since:2005-11-19
Member since:
2007-09-12
This is something I'm very excited about. It can't yet be used for everything, so I went back to gcc, but the underlying technology is very well designed and with a lot of potential.
One of these days I'll have the time to follow the kaleidoscope tutorial and learn how to use llvm to its potential. This will make a lot of things a lot faster and more fun.