LLVM 15.0-rc1 Brings LoongArch, AmpereOne, AMD RDNA3, AMD GFX940 & HTTP Server

The first release candidate of LLVM 15.0 is now available for testing of this growing open-source compiler stack.

LLVM 15.0 was branched earlier this week with the mainline trunk now turning to LLVM 16 development. Overnight LLVM 15.0-rc1 was issued as the first of at least three planned release candidates. These release candidates will continue through the end of August while the hope is for LLVM 15.0.0 to be officially out by mid-September. The current target date is 6 September but that is always subject to change based on blocker bugs and other release factors.

LLVM 15.0 is introducing an HTTP server for Debuginfod, the initial SPIR-V back-end code, Sony began upstreaming the PlayStation 5 compiler target, initial DirectX / HLSL target code, and initial LoongArch CPU architecture code. The LoongArch support for LLVM/Clang follows GCC 12 earlier this year having added LoongArch support and that Chinese architecture now seeing support in Linux 5.19, Glibc preparations, and other ongoing enablement work throughout key open-source projects.

Other hardware-focused support with LLVM 15 includes adding the Cortex-M85, AmpereOne as Ampere's upcoming in-house core design, and other new Arm processor cores.

Also notable with LLVM 15.0 is on the GPU side with the AMDGPU shader compiler back-end. LLVM 15.0 has the initial compiler support for AMD RDNA3/GFX11 graphics hardware as well as GFX940 as the next-gen CDNA target expected to premiere as the AMD Instinct MI300 series. This new AMDGPU support is needed for Mesa's RadeonSI Gallium3D (OpenGL) driver ahead of the next-gen Radeon "RDNA3" graphics cards launching later this year. The LLVM shader compiler is also used by the AMDVLK open-source Vulkan driver and also the ROCM compute stack. It's the open-source RADV driver that prefers its own ACO compiler alternative within Mesa.

Those wishing to download LLVM 15.0-rc1 for testing this weekend can find it via GitHub.