Hello,
On Thu, 16 Oct 2014 23:56:53 +0100 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net wrote:
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Yes, there are several ways to achieve that... but I meant that maybe some projects will only compile with GCC (or run properly if compiled with GCC), because they assume quirks in implementation, invalid syntax in language standards but valid in GCC, and things like that. Like the reasons why Linux kernel does not compile with LLVM. I think that many projects might have similar problems if the compiler is not GCC.
well, we just have to suck it and see. i think we will get a lot of support from ICubeCorp (hopefully this will not overwhelm their engineers) as they will *definitely* want to know when something doesn't work... and fix it!
Sorry, if you said that Cray, Inc. engineers would work on that (because rumors say its their architecture, though I didn't see someone presenting datasheet comparisons) - that at least somehow would sound plausible, but ICubeCorp engineers? Ughh.
Do you follow ESP8266 WiFi chip teh-drama? The piece is supposed to send bankrupt all western IoT chip makers (or maybe not), because Chinese guys did something which guys like TI can't get right for years with their CC3000 stuff.
The story unfolds as follows: The guys behind ESP8266 (https://espressif.com/) figured that while they have something cute (heck, it even has builtin balun), the big guys like Mediatek and Qualcomm are on their ass with their (much crappier) solutions. So, they did 2 things: dumped ESP8266 on the markets on unbelievably low price and leaked SDK based on proprietary compiler (which in turn is based on Open64, what a coincidence!)
But of course they understand that they can't beat Mediatek and Qualcomm with illegal leaked proprietary SDK, only legal open source can be the answer. So they said they work on making GCC SDK.
And here's the salt of the story - no, they can't make it. Because in 2 weeks after ESP8266 went viral, the community, with the help of Cadence engineers (Cadence now owning the Xtensa arch on which ESP8266's CPU is based) already had a working GCC compiler: https://github.com/jcmvbkbc/gcc-xtensa . So, the only choice Espressif engineers are left with is to slowpoke for couple more months, then take community work, screw it up a bit so it was professionally looking proprietary stuff and release as theirs.
So, I wouldn't bet much on how far "ICubeCorp" could go without real community involvement with their CPUs.