Apple Not Yet Committing LLVM/Clang A7 Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Apple Not Yet Comenting On LLVM/Clang A7 Support

Apple released the iPhone 5S today and it's powered by their own A7 chip, which is a 64-bit ARM SoC and claims to be up to twice the CPU and graphics performance of its predecessor. The Apple A7 SoC has over one billion transistors and its interesting to see it being a 64-bit processor while ARM doesn't yet have out its own 64-bit chips in the wild yet. While the A7 is interesting, Apple isn't yet ready to comment on the compiler support...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTQ1ODM

[CTown]

As to why Apple wrote a new backend, my guess is that this backend is optimized for iOS (maybe even just for iOS 7) and the Apple A7; making it pointless for everyone else except for the stuff Apple will eventually port into ARM Holding's LLVM backend. Another reason that I would guess is that Apple's backend contains many hacks in order to meet a deadline and could hurt the LLVM project if it was released as open source due to its quality (it is the first ARMv8 CPU out there). Sort of like Android 3.0 Honeycomb was closed source due to it wasn't properly coded to support smaller devices.


Well, at least AArch64 is finally out there!

[uid313]

64-bit

Really cool to see ARM-v8 64-bit chips coming.
Hope to see more of that.
Hope the competition brings that too.

[droidhacker]

Indications are that it is NOT 64 bit, rather ARMv7s, which is 32bit ARMv7a but with VFPv4.

[Boland]

Indications are that it is NOT 64 bit, rather ARMv7s, which is 32bit ARMv7a but with VFPv4.

http://www.apple.com/iphone-5s/features/

[scottishduck]

Indications are that it is NOT 64 bit, rather ARMv7s, which is 32bit ARMv7a but with VFPv4.

It is confirmed ARMv8...

[89c51]

I somehow have the feeling that once they are able to produce a chip (desktop/workstation) that is as fast as intel's chips they will become a vertically integrated company.

They have the money to do it.

[Serge]

This is an Apple ARM chip? Since when does Apple design their own ARM chips? Is this a recent thing, or is this something that's been in the works for some time? I thought Apple used Samsung ARM chips in their mobile devices.

[johnc]

This is an Apple ARM chip? Since when does Apple design their own ARM chips? Is this a recent thing, or is this something that's been in the works for some time? I thought Apple used Samsung ARM chips in their mobile devices.

Since the A6... which I guess is a year ago now? (iPhone 5?)

[ArneBab]

Did you actually expect them to release it? I guess that they are currently testing how big the backlash would be for keeping their backend proprietary and only releasing binary versions of the compiler to developers.

There?s a reason why LLVM is non-copyleft.