3 ms·

Compiler bugs are not rare, quite the opposite, and this is often because of premature optimisation. For example, GPGPU compilers are awful: http://www.doc.ic

Compiler bugs are not rare, quite the opposite, and this is often because of premature optimisation. For example, GPGPU compilers are awful: http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~afd/homepages/papers/pdfs/2015/PLDI_Fuzzing.pdf http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~afd/homepages/papers/pdfs/2015/PLDI...

DannyBee 11y ago
It's more that compiler vendors who compete mainly on the basis of worthless benchmarks do awful things. This is one of the reasons gcc/llvm won: they don't care about that stuff. I mean, they care about performance, but not at all costs like these guys care. At some point, people wanted compilers that did less stupid things. So they moved to the vendors who did that. The reason it's so awful in the GPGPU space is because none of these vendors produce compilers yet. Instead, the vendors you have are those whose main goal in life is to generate better performance numbers than the other guy. Ask anyone about the old days of fortran compilers and early optimizing C compilers and what have you. What exists now is essentially "what happened after the market pushed back". Sadly, it didn't go as far as some people want (in either direction).
- loup-vaillant 11y ago
  > This is one of the reasons gcc/llvm won: they don't care about that stuff. I mean, they care about performance, but not at all costs like these guys care. Really? http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/kps2015/proceedings/KPS_2015_submission_29.pdf http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/kps2015/proceedings/KPS_201... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11219874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11219874 While GCC and LLVM do care about implementing the standard correctly, they show little mercy to the poor developer who failed to avoid one of the many sharp corners of undefined behaviour.
  - DannyBee 11y ago
    Yes. Really. There was a long thread about this just a few days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11219874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11219874) I already commented there, and since i didn't always have pleasant things to say, i'm not going to repeat them here.

DannyBee 11y ago

It's more that compiler vendors who compete mainly on the basis of worthless benchmarks do awful things. This is one of the reasons gcc/llvm won: they don't care about that stuff. I mean, they care about performance, but not at all costs like these guys care. At some point, people wanted compilers that did less stupid things. So they moved to the vendors who did that. The reason it's so awful in the GPGPU space is because none of these vendors produce compilers yet. Instead, the vendors you have are those whose main goal in life is to generate better performance numbers than the other guy. Ask anyone about the old days of fortran compilers and early optimizing C compilers and what have you. What exists now is essentially "what happened after the market pushed back". Sadly, it didn't go as far as some people want (in either direction).

loup-vaillant 11y ago
> This is one of the reasons gcc/llvm won: they don't care about that stuff. I mean, they care about performance, but not at all costs like these guys care. Really? http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/kps2015/proceedings/KPS_2015_submission_29.pdf http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/kps2015/proceedings/KPS_201... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11219874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11219874 While GCC and LLVM do care about implementing the standard correctly, they show little mercy to the poor developer who failed to avoid one of the many sharp corners of undefined behaviour.
- DannyBee 11y ago
  Yes. Really. There was a long thread about this just a few days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11219874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11219874) I already commented there, and since i didn't always have pleasant things to say, i'm not going to repeat them here.