IBM Adds New "Arch13" Processor Support To GCC 9

GCC 9 is just weeks away from being officially released while today IBM engineers added support for new "arch13" processors to this next compiler update.

Arch13 is a new generation of IBM processors that have yet to be officially announced and building upon the existing s/390 architecture support within the GNU Compiler Collection. Arch13 is serving as a placeholder name similar to previous "archXX" s/390 terminology. The Arch13 support in the IBM S/390 compiler code include supporting new bit operations, new conditional register behavior, new vector instructions for byte and vector element reversal, and other new instructions/built-ins.

Arch13 support was merged this morning into the Git/SVN compiler code ahead of the GCC 9.1 stable compiler release expected around the end of April or in early May. That's about it for now and haven't heard much else about "arch13" outside of this context with the compiler enablement.