Features Of The LLVM / Clang 3.8 Compiler

If all goes well, LLVM 3.8 and Clang 3.8 could be officially released within the next day or so. Here is a look at some of the new features of LLVM/Clang 3.8.

LLVM 3.8 is set to be tagged today while the official v3.8.0 release will happen shortly thereafter should no last minute issues come up. For those curious about the LLVM 3.8 features, highlights include:

- The Autoconf build system has been deprecated.

- The LLVM ORC now has a basic set of C bindings.

- LLVM drops support for Windows XP and Vista to now make Windows 7 its base requirement.

- There is a new, target-independent GCC-compatible emulated Thread Local Storage (TLS) implementation.

- AArch64 has support for more sanitizers, such as the memory and thread sanitizers. AArch64 also has initia LLD support in the new ELF back-end and better LLDB support.

- The LLVM 3.8 ARM back-end has seen a number of performance gains.

- MIPS has P5600 processor support, support for OpenCL, and a variety of other changes.

- Various LLVM x86 improvements.

- Many AMDGPU back-end improvements for AMD GCN graphics cards.

Some of the Clang 3.8 work includes:

- Support for more OpenCL 2.0 features, via the -std=CL2.0 switch, handling of atomic types and image types, and much more.

- Experimental CUDA compilation support.

- Static analyzer improvements.

Stay tuned for benchmarks and more of LLVM/Clang 3.8.