Hacker News with Generative AI: Compiler Optimization

Fun with -fsanitize=undefined and Picolibc (keithp.com)
Both GCC and Clang support the -fsanitize=undefined flag which instruments the generated code to detect places where the program wanders into parts of the C language specification which are either undefined or implementation defined. Many of these are also common programming errors. It would be great if there were sanitizers for other easily detected bugs, but for now, at least the undefined sanitizer does catch several useful problems.

C++, Programming, Compiler Optimization, Security

117 points by JNRowe 12 days ago | 43 comments

Make C string literals const? (wordpress.com)
Martin Uecker has started a new initiative to ensure a better const contract for C2y: change the type of string literals to a const-qualified base type, much as it is already the case in C++. Compilers support this since a very long time; some of them have this as default, some provide command line switches for that model.

C, Programming Languages, Compiler Optimization, Software Engineering, Best Practices

35 points by ingve 20 days ago | 53 comments

Interprocedural Sparse Conditional Type Propagation (railsatscale.com)
It’s 11 o’clock. Do you know where your variables are pointing?

Programming, Compiler Optimization, Software Engineering

70 points by PaulHoule 44 days ago | 11 comments

I spent 181 minutes waiting for the Zig compiler this week (zackoverflow.dev)
TLDR; The Zig compiler takes about 1 minute and 30 seconds to compile debug builds of Bun. Zig's language server doesn't do basic things like type-checking, so often have to run the compiler to see if my code works.

Programming, Software Development, Compiler Optimization, Productivity

11 points by boyter 44 days ago | 1 comments

An Attempt to Catch Up with JITs: The False Lead of Optimizing Inline Caches (programming-journal.org)
Is it possible to improve the performance of AoT compilers by adding Dynamic Binary Modification (DBM) to the executions?

Programming Languages, Compiler Optimization, Performance Optimization

25 points by mpweiher 48 days ago | 1 comments

Smallest Hello World in Various Languages and Compilers (drewdevault.com)
Let’s say you ask your programming language to do the simplest possible task: print out “hello world”. Generally this takes two syscalls: write and exit. The following assembly program is the ideal Linux x86_64 program for this purpose. A perfect compiler would emit this hello world program for any language.

Programming, Assembly Language, Compiler Optimization, Linux, Hello World

5 points by mofosyne 48 days ago | 2 comments

If C++ cmpler became smarter would't be opinionated as rust borrowchecker? (ycombinator.com)
I'm not well versed with either language as I was reading the article published https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/21st-century-c/<p>I suddenly thought of the forward looking trajectory of the idea of making c++ compiler smart(er) as to ease the burden of memory copying (section 3) with zero overhead. If one traces this arc it means that one day c++ compilers would be equivalent to the borrow checker?

C++, Rust, Programming Languages, Compiler Optimization, Memory Management

4 points by itissid 66 days ago | 2 comments

Flattening ASTs and other compiler data structures (2023) (cs.cornell.edu)
Arenas, a.k.a. regions, are everywhere in modern language implementations. One form of arenas is both super simple and surprisingly effective for compilers and compiler-like things. Maybe because of its simplicity, I haven’t seen the basic technique in many compiler courses—or anywhere else in a CS curriculum for that matter. This post is an introduction to the idea and its many virtues.

Compiler Optimization, Data Structures, Computer Science, Programming Languages

157 points by aw1621107 106 days ago | 49 comments

You can use C-Reduce for any language (bernsteinbear.com)
C-Reduce is a tool by Regehr and friends for minimizing C compiler bug reproducers.

Programming, Tools, Compiler Optimization

472 points by Tomte 150 days ago | 113 comments

Ubuntu Praises 5~7% PGO Compiler Optimization Performance Benefits (phoronix.com)
Over the past year we have seen Canonical engineers focus more on optimizing the performance potential of Ubuntu Linux.

Ubuntu, Linux, Compiler Optimization, Performance, Operating Systems

14 points by sandwichsphinx 158 days ago | 2 comments

Compiler Optimization in a Language You Can Understand (sbaziotis.com)

Compiler Optimization, Programming Languages, Software Development

37 points by rurban 160 days ago | 0 comments

Scalable self-improvement for compiler optimization (research.google)
We introduce Iterative BC-Max, a novel technique that aims to reduce the size of the compiled binary files by improving inlining decisions. We describe several benefits to using this approach compared to using off-the-shelf RL algorithms.

Compiler Optimization, Machine Learning, Software Engineering, Optimization Techniques

88 points by matt_d 176 days ago | 6 comments

Optimisation-dependent IR decisions in Clang (convolv.es)

Compiler Optimization, C++, Programming Languages

42 points by luu 250 days ago | 0 comments

Mining JIT traces for missing optimizations with Z3 (pypy.org)

Optimization, Programming, Software, Compiler Optimization, JIT

125 points by matt_d 280 days ago | 42 comments

Hash-based bisect debugging in compilers and runtimes (swtch.com)

Compiler Optimization, Debugging, Software Development, Programming Languages

254 points by rsc 282 days ago | 45 comments

Meta Large Language Model Compiler: Foundation Models of Compiler Optimization (meta.com)