"Andrew Shewmaker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On 10/2/06, Vincent Diepeveen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ... >> Sir, You need to write a compiler blindfolded i'm afraid, unless you are >> going to use software from others. But well you mentionned 2 guys can solve >> all the problems... > > Vincent, you might care to know that you are telling this to Eric Biederman, > the author of romcc. While he didn't write it blindfolded, he wrote it under > the constraint that it cannot use RAM -- only registers. It isn't the > compiler > you are looking for, but rest assured that he understands this subject.
I at least have a clue. That effort was in the ballpark of 3 man months (give or take a man month), and was my first effort at an optimizing compiler. romcc routinely compiles 1000's of lines of C code (at a time) in a production environment. So if one developer can create a decent usable compiler in a man year or so. I find the assertion that it takes 1000s of developers to make a very good compiler questionable. My guess is that figure is a at least an order of magnitude high. Especially when you only consider developers and not marketing, sales, testers, support personnel and the like. I think Intel's big advantage is that their developers can get several years head start on supporting a new core or other new processor development. Beyond that I find it hard to judge because it has been many years since I had to fix a performance problem with something other than an algorithm change, or coding that bit in assembly. Eric _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
