[geeks] SGI Compilers

[Joshua D Boyd]

It seems that SGI opensourced part of their compiler:
http://open64.sourceforge.net/

>From what I gather, it appears that this is the SGI mips compiler with
the MIPS backend removed and an Itanium backend inserted.  So currently,
it is an Itanium only compiler.  I don't know if it would be possible to
make it work on 32bit machines, but it seems that it should be possible
to recreate backends for other 64bit architectures.

Now, there are several notable things about this.  First, it is a more
modern architecture.  Apparently GCC is badly designed for dealing with
things like instruction grouping.  I don't really know that much about
that, I must confess.

The second notable thing about it is that it has Fortrn 90, which I
believe is the first free fortran 90 available.  Now if only we could
have it for platforms we can actually use.

A closely related compiler, ORC, is being developed mainly in China,
funded by Intel.  I can't tell what the affiliations of the people
running Open64 are though.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd