[Openmcl-devel] CCL on Solaris sparc architecture

[Gary Byers]

Amazing; thanks!

On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Ron Garret wrote:

> Found it.
>
> http://www.flownet.com/ron/vxmcl.tar.gz
>
> I have no idea what state it's in.
>
> rg
>
> On Jan 21, 2010, at 3:21 PM, Semih Cemiloglu wrote:
>
>> Hi Gary,
>>
>> Thank you for the detailed response.
>> Ron Garret has promised to chase the abandoned sparc compiler backend.
>> If he finds it, I will see what I can do with it.
>>
>> At this juncture, I really wished that CCL had a generic (=portable ANSI
>> C) compiler backend and runtime support *in addition to* manually
>> optimized assembly backends. That would make porting task very easy.
>> Maybe next compiler backend development should aim that, instead of yet
>> another architecture port.
>>
>> Some of the compilers I work with (Sun Studio CC and Intel C++ in
>> particular) generates very efficient and optimized code. Trying to
>> better their efficiency manually feels like crossing over to level of
>> diminishing returns.
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>> Semih Cemiloglu
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Gary Byers [mailto:gb at clozure.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, 21 January 2010 3:04 PM
>> To: Semih Cemiloglu
>> Cc: openmcl-devel at clozure.com; semih at cemiloglu.org
>> Subject: Re: [Openmcl-devel] CCL on Solaris sparc architecture
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 21 Jan 2010, Semih Cemiloglu wrote:
>>
>>> Dear CCL Developers,
>>>
>>> I am in need of a CL implementation for our product/project which is
>>> aimed at Solaris sparc and x86 platforms.
>>> I see that CCL is available on OpenSolaris/x86 but not on sparc
>>> platforms.
>>>
>>> Is it possible to get an idea of work involved to port CCL to sparc
>>> architecture? Is it necessary to write assembly code to complete the
>>> port? Is internals of CCL and/or building from source documented? If
>>> yes, where can one access the documentation?
>>
>> <http://trac.clozure.com/ccl/wiki/UpdatingFromSource>
>>
>> describes how to rebuild CCL from its source code; this is also
>> discussed
>> in the documentation, which is available online at:
>>
>> <http://ccl.clozure.com/ccl-documentation.html> ; single HTML page
>>
>> and at
>>
>> <http://ccl.clozure.com/manual/> ; one page per chapter
>>
>> The single page version is distributed with CCL.
>>
>> Much of CCL is written in itself, which means that "compiling it from
>> source" is only relevant if you have a compiler that targets the
>> platform that you're compiling on/for.  Getting to that point
>> generally involves writing a compiler backend and machine-specific
>> runtime support for the target, using that compiler backend to
>> cross-compile the sources (into FASL files and a bootstrapping image)
>> for the new target and getting that cross-compiled code working
>> natively.  Matt Emerson (rme at clozure.com) wrote a wiki page with his
>> notes on the cross-compilation/ bootstrapping process that he used
>> when working on the ia32 port; I don't know the URL for that page
>> offhand, but I'm sure that we can find it (somehow) if anyone's
>> interested.
>>
>> About 10 years ago, I did a port of (a very early version of) what's
>> now CCL to 32-bit SPARC/Solaris; that took around 2 months to get to
>> the point where the system could compile itself natively.  I remember
>> knowing of some things that didn't work at all and I'm sure that there
>> were some things that didn't work and that I didn't know about.  That
>> was done as quickly as it was by ignoring the differences between the
>> PPC and the SPARC (e.g., register windows weren't used by Lisp code).
>> CCL/OpenMCL didn't use native threads in those days, and I'm sure that
>> some of the things that were done in that SPARC port weren't anywhere
>> close to being thread-safe.
>>
>> I didn't keep the results of that work (and sometimes regret that),
>> and AFAIK no one else did, either.  The last few ports that we've done
>> (ia32 and x86-64) have taken roughly 6 months each; a PPC64 port done
>> a few years earlier probably took around 3 months (with those months
>> staggered over a few years.)  My best rough guess is that a SPARC port
>> would be easier than the x86 ports (because the architecture is saner)
>> and longer than the PPC64 port (because one would have to start from
>> scratch), so a rough estimate would be that a SPARC port would take
>> ~4-5 months.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance,
>>> Kind regards,
>>>
>>> Semih Cemiloglu
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>>> Openmcl-devel at clozure.com
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>>>
>>>
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