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I think smart compilers for Itanium is a myth. There is nothing that special about compilers for that architecture. The architecture just wasn't good enough.

• imtringued 8y ago
  Compilers for VLIW architectures have to implement instruction scheduling at compile time but the information that is required for the best optimizations is only available at runtime.
  • zzzcpan 8y ago
    It's not really a problem for compiled languages, like C, as they provide enough context for static speculation. But the architecture itself has to be well suited for statically speculated general purpose applications, which Itanium wasn't. Today even Russia have managed to produce a VLIW architecture and a good enough compiler [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus-8S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus-8S
    • acdha 8y ago
      > Today even Russia have managed to produce a VLIW architecture and a good enough compiler Do you have a citation for the “good enough” claim? In particular the listed peak performance appears to be below a modern phone's and, far more importantly, we'd need robust benchmark data to know that it's not following the Itanium cycle where a few very favorable, possibly hand-tuned, benchmarks manage to approach the theoretical maximum but most real-world code is substantially lower.