Compaq announces Beta test for Linux Alpha C compiler
Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the compaq-invest-in-linux---nice.. dept.
Compaq has announced a public beta test for Linux Alpha C compiler (along with fortran). Press release (thanks to Linux PR) is available here, and here is the link for the software. It's good to see Compaq developing compilers and other applications for Linux. Keep up the good work, compaq!
I didn't see any old stories about the Compaq Smart Array driver for the RAID controllers. The driver is found at: http://www.insync.net/~frantzc/cpqarray.html As a disclaimer, I design disk controller hardware for Compaq, but I haven't personally tried this driver yet. It is in the latest kernels, so a lot of people have access to it already. I don't know how many people are actually using it yet, though. The driver is open source, GPL, and was "blessed" for release by management, but is not officially supported by Compaq. The guy who wrote it and the guy who now maintains it are both employees of Compaq, and we are working on releasing an open version of the hardware spec so that others will have an easier time implementing improvements, or alternate driver implementations.
Sometimes bugs in the code are only triggered when turning on optimization. Since the DEC compiler does much more optimization, it is possible that it triggered some latent bugs in the code.
Sigh. Unfortunately this method would also be against the license agreement. Remember, the license specifically forbids using the beta compiler for anything besides evaluation and testing.
I never said that the EGCS/GCC folks should not be able to include optimizations that are also included in the Compaq compiler. However they should develop these optimizations from their own effort or by Compaq's willing generosity, not by reverse engineering Compaq's compiler despite the license agreement.
Last, I never said there was anything immoral about reverse engineering. I do believe that violating the license agreement is immoral. Consider the license agreement to be a promise. Compaq is offering us a compiler. They are saying "Here is this compiler. You may have it if you agree to not reverse engineer it." And when you download the compiler, you are saying "Yes Compaq, I promise to not reverse engineer the compiler." Then if you decide to reverse engineer the compiler anyway, you have broken your promise, which I do think is highly immoral.
This might be a chance to get Linux some competitive SPEC scores. I was somewhat dismayed to see EGCS being beaten by up to 30% by Visual C and Intel's compiler.
15-30% improvement on integer code is nice, but the license is very corporate and not Free. Basically you can use the compiler for evaluation only and you cannot redistribute the compiler at all, for money or otherwise.
Personally I will not be using or even evaluating this compiler on my Multia (and that thing need all the optimization it can get).
Replying to myself, here are the offensive part sof the license at their web site
2. GRANT:
Compaq Computer Corporation ("Compaq") grants you the right to use the Software solely for testing and evaluation. The Software shall not be used for any other purpose and you agree to destroy or erase all copies of the Software upon Compaq's release of the code in final form.
You may copy the Software into the local memory or storage device of any number of computers for your testing and evaluation. The number of computers must be identified in the upcoming screen. You may make archival or back-up copies of the Software.
3. COPYRIGHT
The Software is protected by copyright laws and international treaties. Your use of the Software and associated documentation is subject to the applicable copyright laws and the express rights and restrictions of these License Agreement.
4. RESTRICTIONS
You may not rent, lease, or otherwise transfer the Software. You may not make the Software available over the internet or similar networking technology. You may not remove any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary notices from the Software or the media. You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Software, except to the extent Compaq cannot prohibit such acts by law.
I hope that the GCC/EGCS folks download this compiler, compile a bunch of test cases with both it and GCC/EGCS, and then find all the good bits in the final assembler and put those sort of optimizations into GCC/EGCS.
I don't hope for anything of that sort. I believe that such an action would constitute reverse engineering of the Compaq compiler, and would therefore be against the explicit language of the license agreement.
Compaq wrote it and they are entitled to whatever licensing terms they want. While I believe that Compaq should contribute their optimiations to the community, I don't believe they should be forced to and in the absence of Compaq's willingness I guess the GNU folks are just going to have to rely on their own formidable genius and cunning to come up with a better optimized compiler.
I was under the impression that Compaq owned an entire Unix version. Is this not the case? For some reason I though Compaq made Alphas. If not where do Alpha's come from?
True enough. Don't forget that Compaq really has 3 markets. The x86 desktop market, the x86 server market, and the Alpha Server/Workstation Market.
In the case of Alpha, which this story reports on, Compaq owns Tru64 Unix, which runs on Alpha. It is their commercial Unix aimed at the high-end. At the low end they are starting to seriously support Linux. Primarily in this case by releasing their compiler for Alpha Linux.
Anyways, Compaq has started doing some serious support of Linux, other noteworthy stories include localizing Linux for Asian markets. Also, they've started slowing killing off NT on Alpha.
I agree. There's very little benefit to this compiler for most of us, I think, unless the optimizations it has are rolled into EGCS. Could a distribution be compiled with it? (Scary thought) The compiler isn't going to help anybody develop any Free software, and it's not going to help me, so why should I cheer?
Then don't. There, does that make you feel better?
I guess the important thing is to realize that all software doesn't need to always benefit everyone in the whole world. Compaq port this to benefit a certain clientele. That group of people, will, no doubt be benefited, and feel genuinely benefited. Everyone else will not be benefited, by something that wasn't intended to benefit them.
Use gcc. And Smile! Because gcc benefits you. But it doesn't benefit everyone.
I used to work for Digital, and I met some of the compiler team once. They are very smart people, and their compilers are very efficient and standards compliant to a point.
We have to think about why Compaq bought digital. One reason has to be for Digital's services section, which is one of the best in the world.
Another one has to be for the sheer bulk of tech genius that Digital has. Digital's problem has never been lack of innovation, it was an inability to market these innovations. ( Anyone heard any news of the Itsy? ).
Beleive me, I worked on a product 3 years ago, that still hasn't hit the shelves.
Anyway, Compaq now has a lot of specialist expertise, and it's obviously putting it to good use. We have to respect this. They can't simply buy a multi-billion tech company and start to give away the technologies for free.
Remember that the primary reason that slashdotters cclaim that companies should opensource their technologies is to help them innovate and stabalise. If this is unnecessary, then we don't really have another argument.
I think it's a step in the right direction. We have the people who built the alpha releasing compilers for Linux/Alpha. Sorted.
This is going to allow alot of alpha developers to move from Digital Unix to Linux:)
I assume this is the GEM compiler we're talking about.
Just why is EGCS so much worse than GEM? Is it because of backend very machine-specific optimizations (code scheduling, for example), or is it simply because EGCS does not support all the (mostly) machine-independent optimizations that GEM does?
The reason I ask is that getting EGCS up to speed with the same optimizations as GEM not only helps it on Alpha, it helps it on other platforms as well.
To phrase the question another way: What is the biggest missing piece in EGCS? Analysis? Optimization? Better machine models?
To answer this question you'd have to understand how CPU architectures have changed in the last ten years. Optimization today requires that the compiler reorder instructions using internal knowledge of how the processor works, provide branch prediction information, instruction packing into compatible groups, prefetch and invalidation support, code for recovery from speculative execution failure, and indication to the CPU of what status register flags will be used in the future so that instruction scheduling can potentially be offloaded to a faster ALU if certain flags can be ignored.
Superscalar architecture have vastly changed the way that optimization works, and VLIW Merced promises to change it even more.
I don't write compilers myself, but I know that there is a lot of research being done in these areas, complete with just as many new patents on those algorithms as you would probably anticipate.
-- LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
Re:Makes that BSD licence look good
by
BadlandZ
·
· Score: 3
EeeGad!
It'll be a long rocky road for Linux if all of the Linux community had this "Open Source or F--- Off" attitude.
I'm all for the development of open source software, but it's going to be a while before Postges or MySql is up to the speed of Oracle, before KWord is up to Microsoft Word, before Gnumeric is up to Microsoft Excel, before GCC is up to commercial compilers, before KDeveloper is up to Code Fusion, before GnoMoney is up to Quicken, before....
There is a slow shift to open source software, that is clear. But it's not happening overnight, and there will be a place for commercial applications for quite a time to come. If all the "Microsoft Windows" software ran on Linux today, wouldn't you agree that Linux would probably have a more rapidly expanding user base? And, it the end, this would help the development of open source software?
If you notice, GCC is managed now by Cygnus, and without thier commercial products, they wouldn't have two nickels to rub together, much less host the GCC/EGCS web site, cvs site, ftp site, or the staff to help development of the compiler.
Slashdot itself is running on a MySQL database, which, if you were not aware, is NOT open source, it's commercial (to an extent). So, your post has at least been rendered up by a commercial product.
Really, I think the Linux community at large would be best served to get off of it's GPL evanglist soap box. Personally, I find no harsh things to say about the BSD licence, it's a valid licence, and I would rather see people use the BSD licence that "invent" a licence of thier own like Sun, AOL/Netscape, and Apple have done when they say they are supplying an "open source" product.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't see any old stories about the Compaq Smart Array driver for the RAID controllers. The driver is found at: http://www.insync.net/~frantzc/cpqarray.html As a disclaimer, I design disk controller hardware for Compaq, but I haven't personally tried this driver yet. It is in the latest kernels, so a lot of people have access to it already. I don't know how many people are actually using it yet, though. The driver is open source, GPL, and was "blessed" for release by management, but is not officially supported by Compaq. The guy who wrote it and the guy who now maintains it are both employees of Compaq, and we are working on releasing an open version of the hardware spec so that others will have an easier time implementing improvements, or alternate driver implementations.
--Chris Caudle
Sometimes bugs in the code are only triggered when turning on optimization. Since the DEC compiler does much more optimization, it is possible that it triggered some latent bugs in the code.
I never said that the EGCS/GCC folks should not be able to include optimizations that are also included in the Compaq compiler. However they should develop these optimizations from their own effort or by Compaq's willing generosity, not by reverse engineering Compaq's compiler despite the license agreement.
Last, I never said there was anything immoral about reverse engineering. I do believe that violating the license agreement is immoral. Consider the license agreement to be a promise. Compaq is offering us a compiler. They are saying "Here is this compiler. You may have it if you agree to not reverse engineer it." And when you download the compiler, you are saying "Yes Compaq, I promise to not reverse engineer the compiler." Then if you decide to reverse engineer the compiler anyway, you have broken your promise, which I do think is highly immoral.
-jwb
This might be a chance to get Linux some competitive SPEC scores. I was somewhat dismayed to see EGCS being beaten by up to 30% by Visual C and Intel's compiler.
Personally I will not be using or even evaluating this compiler on my Multia (and that thing need all the optimization it can get).
-jwb
Hrm, this seems good and all, but why make their own compiler?
If all they did was create a compiler with Alpha specific optimizations then why not just throw those into gcc?
Intel seems to still know what (OSS) nerds want. Their development on the Mercede compiler with Cygnus is still way ahead in the OSS game.
True enough. Don't forget that Compaq really has 3 markets. The x86 desktop market, the x86 server market, and the Alpha Server/Workstation Market.
In the case of Alpha, which this story reports on, Compaq owns Tru64 Unix, which runs on Alpha. It is their commercial Unix aimed at the high-end. At the low end they are starting to seriously support Linux. Primarily in this case by releasing their compiler for Alpha Linux.
Anyways, Compaq has started doing some serious support of Linux, other noteworthy stories include localizing Linux for Asian markets. Also, they've started slowing killing off NT on Alpha.
=Brent--
Then don't. There, does that make you feel better?
I guess the important thing is to realize that all software doesn't need to always benefit everyone in the whole world. Compaq port this to benefit a certain clientele. That group of people, will, no doubt be benefited, and feel genuinely benefited. Everyone else will not be benefited, by something that wasn't intended to benefit them.
Use gcc. And Smile! Because gcc benefits you. But it doesn't benefit everyone.
-Brent--
I used to work for Digital, and I met some of
:)
the compiler team once. They are very smart people, and their compilers are very efficient and standards compliant to a point.
We have to think about why Compaq bought digital. One reason has to be for Digital's services section, which is one of the best in the world.
Another one has to be for the sheer bulk of tech genius that Digital has. Digital's problem has never been lack of innovation, it was an inability to market these innovations. ( Anyone heard any news of the Itsy? ).
Beleive me, I worked on a product 3 years ago, that still hasn't hit the shelves.
Anyway, Compaq now has a lot of specialist expertise, and it's obviously putting it to good use. We have to respect this. They can't simply buy a multi-billion tech company and start to give away the technologies for free.
Remember that the primary reason that slashdotters cclaim that companies should opensource their technologies is to help them innovate and stabalise. If this is unnecessary, then we don't really have another argument.
I think it's a step in the right direction. We have the people who built the alpha releasing compilers for Linux/Alpha. Sorted.
This is going to allow alot of alpha developers to move from Digital Unix to Linux
-- hjw http://puzl.info/
Just why is EGCS so much worse than GEM? Is it because of backend very machine-specific optimizations (code scheduling, for example), or is it simply because EGCS does not support all the (mostly) machine-independent optimizations that GEM does?
The reason I ask is that getting EGCS up to speed with the same optimizations as GEM not only helps it on Alpha, it helps it on other platforms as well.
To phrase the question another way: What is the biggest missing piece in EGCS? Analysis? Optimization? Better machine models?
--
It'll be a long rocky road for Linux if all of the Linux community had this "Open Source or F--- Off" attitude.
I'm all for the development of open source software, but it's going to be a while before Postges or MySql is up to the speed of Oracle, before KWord is up to Microsoft Word, before Gnumeric is up to Microsoft Excel, before GCC is up to commercial compilers, before KDeveloper is up to Code Fusion, before GnoMoney is up to Quicken, before....
There is a slow shift to open source software, that is clear. But it's not happening overnight, and there will be a place for commercial applications for quite a time to come. If all the "Microsoft Windows" software ran on Linux today, wouldn't you agree that Linux would probably have a more rapidly expanding user base? And, it the end, this would help the development of open source software?
If you notice, GCC is managed now by Cygnus, and without thier commercial products, they wouldn't have two nickels to rub together, much less host the GCC/EGCS web site, cvs site, ftp site, or the staff to help development of the compiler.
Slashdot itself is running on a MySQL database, which, if you were not aware, is NOT open source, it's commercial (to an extent). So, your post has at least been rendered up by a commercial product.
Really, I think the Linux community at large would be best served to get off of it's GPL evanglist soap box. Personally, I find no harsh things to say about the BSD licence, it's a valid licence, and I would rather see people use the BSD licence that "invent" a licence of thier own like Sun, AOL/Netscape, and Apple have done when they say they are supplying an "open source" product.