intel 960 support Was: pentium?

[Robert Lipe]

Joel Sherrill wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Oct 1997, Neal Becker wrote:
> 
> > On a related subject - we use also use i960 here.  I have to use the
> > intel version, because they have added a number of features.
> > Unfortunately, their version is pretty out-of-date, and I'm not sure
> > they're maintaining it.  Any plans to incorporate any of intel's i960
> > improvements?

Intel released version a major overhaul of the tools about a year or 
so ago.  By that time, my involvement with i960 was long over.

I recall in late '95, perhaps early '96 doing a big shootout between the
Cygnus progressive compiler of that era and the Intel tools (which I recently
took great delight in removing, so I can't tell you the version number, but
it was < 4.0).    It was about a draw.   The Intel version contained some
chip-specific things for the JK and JA and could therefore dhrystone about
2-3% better.  However, the Cygnus version would actually work given any
non-trivial input. :-)

> Specifically what features are missing in egcs?

Gosh, I can't recall.   There were (obviously) chip-specific 
optimizations present that the Cygnus/FSF version didn't have.
It knew more about the pipelines.   The linker knew how to do 
jump to a jump sorts of optimizations.    Nothing earthshattering
that I recall.

The thing I do recall was the that the Intel version wasn't very
reliable and was always having to look over its shoulder.

RJL