Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1999 22:39:16 +0100
To: "'pgcc AT delorie DOT com'" <pgcc AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: Intel/Cygnus
Message-ID: <19990303223916.G9656@cerebro.laendle>
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References: <36DD6D94 DOT 79AFEC8F AT mitre DOT org> <19990303193418 DOT B19013 AT tardis DOT ed DOT ac DOT uk>
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In-Reply-To: <19990303193418.B19013@tardis.ed.ac.uk>; from Mark Brown on Wed, Mar 03, 1999 at 07:34:18PM +0000
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From: Marc Lehmann <pcg AT goof DOT com>
Reply-To: pgcc AT delorie DOT com

On Wed, Mar 03, 1999 at 07:34:18PM +0000, Mark Brown wrote:
> >     I read a news story a while back stating that Intel was going to
> > help cygnus with pentium MMX/KNI etc. optimizing compilers.
> 
> >     Is that for egcs?  Does it have any relation to the pgcc patch.  For
> 
> I don't know, but I imagine it would be based on egcs.  Marc?

egcs is _not_ a cygnus project, no. Currently, cygnus has its own version
of gcc. Cygnus will base their (internal) version on egcs (maybe they
already switched, I don't know).

in general, cygnus is a commercial comnpany, and they do what they get paid
for. In some cases their clients allow them to donate new compiler passes
to egcs (in fact cygnus is always trying to do this).

I don't know of intel trying to help cygnus, but egcs will certainly have
mmx/kni support in the future, with or without intels help.

> > that matter, why isn't pgcc merged into the egcs tree anyway?
> 
> To avoid hurting non Pentium machines.  PGCC optimizatons are often
> Pentium-specific, and may produce worse code on other architectures.
> Before they can be introduced into EGCS they need to be rewritten more
> generally.

There is also a licensing problem with intel, which technically owns part of
the code.

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