The State Of 64-Bit ARM (AArch64) On LLVM/Clang

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The State Of 64-Bit ARM (AArch64) On LLVM/Clang

ARM's AArch64 back-end for LLVM to handle the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture is working, but there's still more work ahead of the hardware's general availability in about one year's time...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTIzMjQ

[89c51]

Off topic and out of curiosity since Arm is becoming more and more popular. Is there anything design wise that would prohibit Arm from becoming a general purpose or high performance chip.

[ldesnogu]

Off topic and out of curiosity since Arm is becoming more and more popular. Is there anything design wise that would prohibit Arm from becoming a general purpose or high performance chip.

Nothing at all. It will probably happen but don't expect an ARM chip to get close to higher-end x86 chips anytime soon.

[bachinchi]

Off topic and out of curiosity since Arm is becoming more and more popular. Is there anything design wise that would prohibit Arm from becoming a general purpose or high performance chip.

Until recently (maybe not that recently), the only thing lacking was strong competition.
I would expect ARM chips to become closer and closer to x86 as time passes.

[89c51]

Nothing at all. It will probably happen but don't expect an ARM chip to get close to higher-end x86 chips anytime soon.

Because nobody is putting resources in doing something like that right??




I can see Apple or AMD doing it at some point in the future.

[ldesnogu]

Because nobody is putting resources in doing something like that right??

That used to be the case, because ARM main market was deeply embedded and phones. Since phones and tablets now require some CPU performance, this has changed and CPU design teams are now focusing on performance (while trying to preserve power), but to reach the level of performance AMD and Intel have it will take some iterations.

I can see Apple or AMD doing it at some point in the future.

ARM is doing it too, look at the upcoming Cortex-A57. Qualcomm and nVidia surely are working on higher performance ARM CPU too. And I bet Marvell too.

[curaga]

Yet again I must question who names these things...

An architecture that is named like a cry of pain (and yes, I insist on pronouncing it AAARGH forevermore now), and a compiler component called MC Hammer.

[89c51]

Yet again I must question who names these things...

An architecture that is named like a cry of pain (and yes, I insist on pronouncing it AAARGH forevermore now), and a compiler component called MC Hammer.

Its pronounced a-arch 64 except for the times it crashes when you pronounce it as you suggested