[LLVMdev] LLVM IR is a compiler IR

Dan Gohman
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:18:48 -0000

On Oct 5, 2011, at 1:17 AM, Renato Golin wrote:

> On 5 October 2011 01:19, Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> wrote:
>> I'm not sure what you're getting at here.  My email was not
intended to say that I'm not interested in LLVM improving - quite the
contrary.  My email was to rebut Dan's implicit claim that PNaCL and using
LLVM as a portable IR is never going to work.  I'm arguing in the
"opencl" and "pnacl" folks favor :)
>
> Hi Chris,
>
> Ok, I think I (now) get your drift. Let's restart the conversation,
then. ;)
>
> If I got it right this time, from your point of view, Dan's arguments
> are not accurate because IR never intended to be anything else anyway.
> PNaCl, OpenCL, RenderScript, Java-like VMs were aggregated over time
> and tried to use IR for what it was not designed to be. I completely
> agree with you in that one.

Hi Renato,

I think you're overreacting here.  There is nothing about OpenCL,
RenderScript,
or VMKit that requires LLVM IR be used like a Platform, as I defined it in my
first paragraph.  I'm aware that some people would like to use LLVM IR as a
Platform, and I'm saying that there are important high-level considerations
to make before doing so, and my impression is that there is little discussion of
issues I consider important.

Possibly it's too late for some though, and possibly people are getting too
caught up on the thorny ABI issues and missing my broader ideas.

Dan