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Re: Threading the compiler
- From: Ross Ridge <rridge at csclub dot uwaterloo dot ca>
- To: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 19:58:43 -0500
- Subject: Re: Threading the compiler
Mike Stump writes:
>We're going to have to think seriously about threading the compiler. Intel
>predicts 80 cores in the near future (5 years). [...] To use this many
>cores for a single compile, we have to find ways to split the work. The
>best way, of course is to have make -j80 do that for us, this usually
>results in excellent efficiencies and an ability to use as many cores
>as there are jobs to run.
Umm... those 80 processors that Intel is talking about are more like the
8 coprocessors in the Cell CPU. It's not going to give you an 80-way
SMP machine that you can just "make -j80" on. If that's really your
target achitecture you're going to have to come up with some really
innovative techniques to take advantage of it in GCC. I don't think
working on parallelizing GCC for 4- and 8-way SMP systems is going to
give you much of a head start. Which isn't to say it wouldn't be a
worthy enough project in it's own right.
Ross Ridge