Re: Are there different programming languages that are compiled to the same intermediate language?

From	gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: Are there different programming languages that are compiled to the same intermediate language?
Date	2023-02-02 16:24 -0800
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<23-02-007@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<Adkz+TvWa4zLl8W9Qd6ovtClKZpZrA==> <23-01-078@comp.compilers> <23-02-001@comp.compilers>

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(snip, I wrote)

> Could we have a standard intermediate language, with all
> features needed, or that ever will be needed?

> [The answer to that last question is no. It's a very old bad idea,
> with the first failed attempt UNCOL in 1958. -John]

I have wondered, though, about a standardized intermediate
for a processor family.  One could write compilers to generate it,
and then updated processors come along with updated code
generators.   Or even distribute intermediate code, and the
installer generates the right version for the processor.

This would have been especially useful for Itanium, which
(mostly) failed due to problems with code generation.
Since the whole idea is that the processor depends on the
code generator doing things in the right order.  That is, out
of order execution, but determined at compile time. Failure
to do that meant failure for the whole idea.

[Someone comes up with an intermediate language that works for a few
source languages and a few targets, and usually publishes a paper
about his breakthrough. Then people try to add more front ends and
back ends, the intermediate language gets impossibly complex and
buggy, and the project is quietly forgotten. I'd think the back end
problem is a lot easier now than it was in 1958 since everything is
twos complement arithmetic in 8-bit bytes, but the front end is still
daunting.
If you don't push it too far it's certainly possible to do a lot of
work in a largely machine-independent way as LLVM does. -John]

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