Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures

From	anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures
Date	2021-10-06 07:56 +0000
Organization	Institut fuer Computersprachen, Technische Universitaet Wien
Message-ID	<21-10-012@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<21-10-007@comp.compilers>

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"Luke A. Guest" <laguest@archeia.com> writes:
>I have a Z80 project in mind and would like to build a compiler for a
>Z80.  I was wondering if modern backend techniques can be applied
>successfully for these old CPU's, i.e. SSA.

SSA can certainly be used in a compiler for the Z80, but SSA is not a
back-end technique; it's a way to represent data flow in the
intermediate representation.

As for the back-end, it seems to me that the major problem with the
Z80 is that it does not have general-purpose registers; instead, many
instructions deal with specific registers.  Many early architectures
were like that, and assembly programmers could puzzle out good
register assignments, but compilers were not particularly good at it.
So eventually computer architects introduced machines with
general-purpose registers like the PDP-11, the VAX, and the RISCs; and
compiler writers developed techniques like graph colouring to make
good use of these architectures.

Maybe with the increased memory and processing power available now,
one could do better, but given that special-purpose registers are
mostly a thing of the past, there has not been much research into
that, that I am aware of.  Maybe the puzzle-solving approach to
register allocation can help, but I am not familiar enough with that
to say for sure.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/

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Modern compilers for ye olde architectures "Luke A. Guest" <laguest@archeia.com> - 2021-10-05 13:22 +0100
  Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-10-05 19:59 +0200
  Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@netscape.net> - 2021-10-05 22:12 +0200
  Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures Derek Jones <derek@NOSPAM-knosof.co.uk> - 2021-10-06 01:26 +0100
    Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures "Luke A. Guest" <laguest@archeia.com> - 2021-10-06 09:00 +0100
  Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2021-10-06 07:56 +0000
    Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2021-10-06 18:20 +0200
      Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2021-10-15 07:37 +0000
        Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2021-10-18 08:35 +0200
        Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2021-10-18 08:56 +0200
        Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2021-10-18 09:17 +0200
          Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2021-10-21 21:53 -0700
            Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures Kaz Kylheku <480-992-1380@kylheku.com> - 2021-10-22 17:28 +0000
    Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures dave_thompson_2@comcast.net - 2021-11-14 15:04 -0500
  Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures Theo <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> - 2021-10-06 10:36 +0100
    Re: Modern compilers for ye olde architectures "Luke A. Guest" <laguest@archeia.com> - 2021-10-06 16:20 +0100

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