LLVM 6.0 Released With C++14 Default, Intel/AMD Scheduling Improvements

Today marks the long-awaited release of LLVM 6.0 as the slightly late half-year update to this open-source compiler stack and its sub-projects like Clang, LLD, etc.

Among the changes to find with LLVM 6.0 / Clang 6.0 are:

- Improved scheduler models for several x86 micro-architectures, including most Intel CPUs from Sandy Bridge and newer.

- The AMD Zen "znver1" scheduler model is also now considered effectively complete with LLVM 6.0.

- Clang 6.0 now defaults to C++14 by default (GNU++14) rather than C++98. This matches the behavior of GCC while the actual C++14 support has been in place for Clang for quite a while now with -std=gnu++14, this is simple a change in the default.

- Early bits of C++2A support in Clang.

- Retpoline support for Spectre Variant 2 mitigation on Linux, though this support is also being back-ported to LLVM 5.0.

- Intel Icelake CPU support.

- Many other improvements and new features.

The brief LLVM 6.0.0 release announcement can be read on llvm-announce.

Onwards now to LLVM 7.0 for release in late 2018. GCC 8.1 meanwhile should be released within the next few weeks as its first stable GCC 8 release as part of the annual GNU compiler toolchain update.