On 29-01-2012 04:38, Daniel Murphy wrote:
"bearophile"<bearophileh...@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:jg2cku$2ljk$1...@digitalmars.com...
Integer numbers have some proprieties that compilers use with built-in
fixed-size numbers to optimize code. I think such optimizations are not
performed on library-defined numbers like a Fixed!128 or BigInt. This
means there are advantages of having cent/ucent/BigInt as built-ins.
Yes, but the advantages in implementation ease and portability currently
favour a library solution.
Do the gcc or llvm backends support 128 bit integers?
Can't speak for GCC, but LLVM allows arbitrary-size integers. SDC maps
cent/ucent to i128.
Alternatively in theory special annotations are able to tell the compiler
that a user-defined type shares some of the characteristics of integer
numbers, allowing the compiler to optimize better at compile-time. But I
think not even the Scala compiler is so powerful.
This would still require backend support for many things.
Most of LLVM's optimizers work on arbitrary-size ints.
--
- Alex
