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yes. developers will be able to submit apps as LLVM Bitcode which means that Apple can switch to ARM for some new device and recompile the app without the devel
by crucialfelix 11y ago
yes. developers will be able to submit apps as LLVM Bitcode which means that Apple can switch to ARM for some new device and recompile the app without the developer having to resubmit it.
It also means the end of Universal binaries as Apple can thin the compiled app for each target device.
the PPC switch over was painful, as was the 32 versus 64 bit era. They want to avoid that in the future.
- pg314 11y agoAt the moment LLVM bit code generated by Clang is still architecture dependent (e.g. sizeof() still generates code that depends on the architecture).
- willvarfar 11y agoBut modern CPUs are all converging on 64-bits, for example. Use of SIMD intrinsics are a tougher nut, but I've actually been playing with them at an IR level for hobby stuff and I declare its not intractable.
- mappu 11y agoConverging on 64-bit CPUs doesn't mean converging on standard `sizeof()` values (c.f. windows x86_64 ABI is LLP64 but linux x86_64 ABI is LP64)
- willvarfar 11y agoIt's easy to loose sight of the fact that we are talking about 64bit OS X here... The diff between ir that targeted x86-64 and arm64 and so on is something Apple has some control over. I know, I play with a hobby llvm backend that retargets.
- crucialfelix 11y agotrue, I didn't mean that it would solve a future 32 v 64 problem.
- delinka 11y ago"the PPC switch over was painful" How so? I recall it being amazingly painless.