Porting new target architecture to GCC

[Alexander Monakov]

On Wed, 2 May 2012, Ben Morgan wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> In a course at my university (Universität Würzburg, Germany) we have
> created a 32-bit RISC CPU architecture -- the HaDesXI-CPU -- (in VHDL)
> which we then play onto a FPGA (the Xilinx Spartan-3AN) to use. So far
> if we want to do anything with it, we have to write the assembly code
> ourselves.
> 
> How much work would it be to write a HadesXI backend for GCC?

I remember "6 months and more of full-time work for a skilled developer"
mentioned on this mailing list.

> Where would be a good place to start; what are the prerequisites for
> undertaking a project like this other than knowing the CPU architecture
> inside out?

I recommend reading "The GGX patch archive" blog entries to get a "big
picture" of the steps involved.  It was available at spindazzle.org/ggx,
but at the moment you'll have to browse it via The Internet Archive
( http://web.archive.org/web/20100117171845/http://spindazzle.org/ggx/ ).
Apart from that, the GCC wiki has accumulated many resources, especially
in the GettingStarted section ( http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GettingStarted ).

Alexander