4 ms·

As someone who worked on C compilers for DSPs for a few years, I was conditioned for a while to think "compilers are broken, libraries are broken - you have no

by smcl 4y ago

As someone who worked on C compilers for DSPs for a few years, I was conditioned for a while to think "compilers are broken, libraries are broken - you have no hope" for a while, when all I dealt with was our software. Obviously that's heavily influenced by what I was actually dealing with day to day and not by normal software development, but still :) One of the guys in my team handled a frantic support request from a Formula 1 team because they required reproducible builds or else they got some fine from the FIA, and they somehow hit a situation where our compiler was outputting different code depending on time of day. Wild.

nappy-doo 4y ago
From your description of the bug, I think even know which compiler you worked on. I worked on a competitors compiler. The state of embedded tools in the lates 90s and early 2000s was deplorable. I'm surprised we got anything working. (I went to work for the compiler team because I was so pissed off at how poorly they worked.)
- smcl 4y ago
  I should maybe have just said, it's not like it's sensitive information. It was @ Analog Devices, and given the engineer who was assigned to this bug I think it would have been for their TigerSHARC DSP. Trying to think who you might have worked for - Green Hills maybe? The compiler itself felt well-written and there were some very smart people involved in developing it. And now that I think about it the bug wasn't different code being output but some value elsewhere in the generated binary itself - maybe some ELF header? I wish I could remember
  - nappy-doo 4y ago
    Ah, I worked at ADI too. I rewrote the TigerSHARC register allocator (not adopted [complicated reasons, but Edinburgh wouldn't accept changes from the US]), and left the DSP group, and soon afterwards ADI. I thought you meant TI. Their compiler would compile in the date of compilation as a string by default (it wasn't deadcode eliminated in the linker because it was sucked in their panic libraries, if memory serves). In any case, yeah, ADI.

by smcl 4y ago

nappy-doo 4y ago

From your description of the bug, I think even know which compiler you worked on. I worked on a competitors compiler. The state of embedded tools in the lates 90s and early 2000s was deplorable. I'm surprised we got anything working. (I went to work for the compiler team because I was so pissed off at how poorly they worked.)

smcl 4y ago
I should maybe have just said, it's not like it's sensitive information. It was @ Analog Devices, and given the engineer who was assigned to this bug I think it would have been for their TigerSHARC DSP. Trying to think who you might have worked for - Green Hills maybe? The compiler itself felt well-written and there were some very smart people involved in developing it. And now that I think about it the bug wasn't different code being output but some value elsewhere in the generated binary itself - maybe some ELF header? I wish I could remember
- nappy-doo 4y ago
  Ah, I worked at ADI too. I rewrote the TigerSHARC register allocator (not adopted [complicated reasons, but Edinburgh wouldn't accept changes from the US]), and left the DSP group, and soon afterwards ADI. I thought you meant TI. Their compiler would compile in the date of compilation as a string by default (it wasn't deadcode eliminated in the linker because it was sucked in their panic libraries, if memory serves). In any case, yeah, ADI.