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The compiler for this language will be too slow to be useful. Contrary to this author's belief, crypto people really do care about performance. Anyway, what t
by theseoafs 11y ago
The compiler for this language will be too slow to be useful. Contrary to this author's belief, crypto people really do care about performance.
Anyway, what the author wants isn't a "boring C" compiler, it's a compiler for a new language that doesn't actually have undefined behavior.
- geertj 11y agoYou realize the author is Dan Bernstein, right?
- guelo 11y agoFrom the article: > * Claim that a boring C compiler can't possibly support the desired system _performance_. Even if this were true (which I very much doubt), why would it be more important than system _correctness_?
- theseoafs 11y agoI read the article. I don't know if the author has considered the implications of what he wrote. What we're talking about is: * Treating all memory accesses as if they were defined * No dead code elimination * Treating all pointers as if they're volatile This adds up to a lot of overhead.
- 0xcde4c3db 11y agoIt can't be taken for granted that performance and correctness are separate concerns. Even leaving aside the obvious category of realtime applications, performance issues can create DoS vulnerabilities. edit: That being said, a boringcc might end up being less susceptible to these vulnerabilities in practice, since the performance of the emitted code might be more predictable. I'm sure djb has considered this. But in general I think it's often a mistake to think of performance as an implementation detail rather than as a deliberate feature.