Re: Why do we still assemble?

philw@tempel.research.att.com (Phil Winterbottom)
Fri, 15 Apr 1994 05:02:14 GMT

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[28 earlier articles]
Re: Why do we still assemble? rfg@netcom.com (1994-04-13)
Re: Why do we still assemble? zstern@adobe.com (1994-04-13)
Re: Why do we still assemble? mps@dent.uchicago.edu (1994-04-14)
Re: Why do we still assemble? bill@amber.ssd.csd.harris.com (1994-04-14)
Re: Why do we still assemble? hbaker@netcom.com (1994-04-14)
Re: Why do we still assemble? djohnson@arnold.ucsd.edu (1994-04-15)
Re: Why do we still assemble? philw@tempel.research.att.com (1994-04-15)
Re: Why do we still assemble? pardo@cs.washington.edu (1994-04-15)
Re: Why do we still assemble? wirzeniu@cc.helsinki.fi (Lars Wirzenius) (1994-04-16)
Re: Why do we still assemble? hbaker@netcom.com (1994-04-16)
Re: Why do we still assemble? hrubin@b.stat.purdue.edu (1994-04-17)
Re: Why do we still assemble? bevan@cs.man.ac.uk (Stephen J Bevan) (1994-04-18)
| List of all articles for this month |
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: philw@tempel.research.att.com (Phil Winterbottom)
Keywords: assembler, design
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
References: 94-04-032 94-04-049
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 1994 05:02:14 GMT

steve@cegelecproj.co.uk (Steve_Kilbane) writes:
>The Plan 9 C compiler is, I believe, a single executable (well, several,
>but there's one for each architecture). It also includes the preprocessor,
>too. It produces an object file which is then fed to a loader. I believe
>the paper comes with the Plan 9 distribution.


Both the Plan9 C compilers and ALEF compilers produce a pseudo assembler.


The pseudo assembler is a binary rather than text representation of the
assembly. Care is taken to make the representation portable between
architectures. Many of the pseudo instructions are macro instructions
expanded by the loader. The division of labor seems to have been
reasonably successful. The loader performs assembly, instruction
scheduling, branch folding and some other opportunistic optimizations.


There is a paper describing the C compilers by Ken in the plan9 documents
on research.att.com.


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