A Case Study of Code Generator Generation for Embedded SIMD Computers

Can today's most advanced compiler generation systems handle specialized parallel processor architectures? To answer this question, a compiler targeting the embedded RVIP SIMD architecture was generated, using a combination of the DML-P front-end generator and the BEG back-end generator from the CoSy compiler generation toolset. A number of difficulties were encountered when specifying the code generator, for example disability to denote arbitrary register sequences in BEG specifications. However, the end result was positive and a number of lessons were learned on how to improve and generalize the code generation framework. An industrial-strength radar image filtering application was compiled with the generated compiler, giving a benchmarked performance of 2.8 times slower compared to the the same application implemented in micro-code like assembly. Despite the slow-down, industry considered this to be much better than expected. By improving BEG, including optimizing transformers from CoS...