Re: [Caml-list] Ocamlopt x86-32 and SSE2

[Dmitry Bely <dmitry.bely@gmail.com>]

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> On Monday 11 May 2009 09:05:08 Dmitry Bely wrote:
>> I think it would be the major code rewrite (if ever possible). Merging
>> SSE2 from amd64 into i386 code generator took about a day of my
>> efforts. How much time LLVM integration would require? If it is that
>> simple can you provide a proof-of-the-concept implementation?
>
> Well, I can provide a complete garbage collected VM. :-)
>
>  http://hlvm.forge.ocamlcore.org/

We are talking about a new backend to Ocaml compiler, aren't we?

> The hard part of writing an LLVM backend for ocamlopt is probably getting LLVM
> to generate code that is compatible with OCaml's GC, particularly the stack.
> However, I believe Gordon Henriksen already did this:
>
>  "Included in the pending LLVM garbage collection code generation
> changeset is an Ocaml frametable emitter." -
>  http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2007-November/011527.html

So it's just pie in the sky. No working implementation has been
demonstrated since then. The answer to your "why not use LLVM to
replace several of the existing backends?" question is quite obvious.

- Dmitry Bely