Graph coloring for register allocation?

[Stan Shebs]

Do we believe that the use of graph coloring will improve GCC's
register allocation?  IBM's patent will presumably run out in a couple
of years, so it seems like a good time to start thinking about it.
Perhaps IBM could be nice and license it for GCC before then, but
maybe it doesn't matter, because the current algorithm has gotten
enough tuning over the years?  Has anybody experimented with this?

Stan