Latest Trends in Compiler Technology and Applications

Wed, Nov 6, 2024

This article aims to share some news, that I found interesting, hoping that they could also interest other people. The main topics are compilers, but also application domains and computing architecture, up to commercial products. No time to comment all these news, just collect them :-)

Compiler world

• Intel’s compiler engineers today posted a number of feature patches for the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for enabling new ISA features to be found with next-generation Xeon “Diamond Rapids” processors. Excitingly a number of new Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) features are coming with next-gen Intel Xeon “Intel Preps GCC Compiler For New AMX & ISA Features Ahead Of Diamond Rapids” : https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-GCC-Diamond-Rapids-ISA

• GCC 15 “Stage 1” Feature Development Ending Next Month : https://www.phoronix.com/news/GCC-15-Stage-1-Ends-November

  • A RISC-V LISP Compiler…Written In Lisp https://hackaday.com/2024/10/14/a-risc-v-lisp-compiler-written-in-lisp/

    • GCC Preparing To Set C23 “GNU23” As Default C Language Version : https://www.phoronix.com/news/GCC-Prepares-std-gnu23-Default

  • Initial Benchmarks Of The AMD AOCC 5.0 Compiler On 5th Gen EPYC : https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-aocc-5

  • Suggestion Raised For Using PGO + LLVM BOLT To Optimize More Fedora Packages : https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-Idea-More-PGO-LLVM-BOLT

Applications / performances

• Table lookups are efficient : https://lemire.me/blog/2024/10/14/table-lookups-are-efficient/

• What Would It Take To Recreate Bell Labs? https://hackaday.com/2024/10/17/what-would-it-take-to-recreate-bell-labs/

• How fast can you parse a CSV file in C#? https://lemire.me/blog/2024/10/17/how-fast-can-you-parse-a-csv-file-in-c/

• Pain of Porting: The Limitations and Costs of GPU-Driven HPC-AI https://insidehpc.com/2024/10/pain-of-porting-the-limitations-and-costs-of-gpu-driven-hpc-ai/

• Huawei makes divorce from Android official with HarmonyOS NEXT launch: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/23/huaweis_harmonyos_next_launch/

• Huawei releases data detailing serverless secrets : https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/24/huawei_serverless_cold_start_research/

Computing architecture evolution

• Linear Address Masking in theory is great and can allow for some nifty features in user-space like for databases, web servers, Java, and other high level languages and for profiling and more. But besides Linus Torvalds not liking Intel’s “LAN” name, it’s also been found to have security issues with the initial processor support. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Disabling-Intel-LAM

• RISC-V reaches milestone with RVA23 profile ratification : https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/23/rva23_profile_ratified/

  • Linux Fixes Indirect Branch Predictor Barrier “IBPB” Handling For Older AMD CPUs https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-AMD-Fixes-IBPB-Older-CPUs

• • Chinese chipmaker Loongson now just three to five years off the pace on the desktop : https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/21/loongson_3b6600_desktop_tease/

    • A closer look at Intel and AMD’s different approaches to gluing together CPUs : https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/24/intel_amd_packaging/

Commercial & industrial news

• the company’s Pheonix fab delivered 4 percent better yield on advanced chips than fab sites in Taiwan is impressive. In chip industry parlance, yield is a quality measurement that refers to the percentage of non-defective products on a semiconductor : https://insidehpc.com/2024/10/tsmc-in-arizona-announces-higher-yields-than-fabs-in-taiwan/

• One-third of payments to contractors training AI systems used by companies such as Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have not been paid on time after the Australian company Appen moved to a new worker management platform. Appen employs 1 million contractors who speak more than 500 languages and are based in 200 countries. They work to label photographs, text, audio and other data to improve AI systems used by the large tech companies and have been referred to as “ghost workers” – the unseen human labour involved in training systems people use every day. https://www.osnews.com/story/140987/contractors-training-amazon-meta-and-microsofts-ai-systems-left-without-pay-after-appen-moves-to-new-platform/