Sure it definitely would be a lot to implement _now_, but llvm was released roughly 5 years before v8. The v8 team totally could have chosen it for a compiler

Sure it definitely would be a lot to implement _now_, but llvm was released roughly 5 years before v8. The v8 team totally could have chosen it for a compiler back end (code generation). My observation was simply that they didn't, and I believe there probably was a reason for it (though I can't speak to it). In hindsight, it probably would've made more sense for Google to utilize llvm as a compiler IR in v8 than as a virtual machine as in PNaCl. [1] [1] http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2011-October/043719.html http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2011-October/0437...