[net.lang.c] host 68K C cross-compiler sought

cpr@su-shasta.arpa (01/18/85)

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I recently researched this to great lenghts, and found that Green Hills
Software C68000 was by far the best cross-compiler available.  We beta-tested
some recent versions, found some (very few) bugs, and received excellent
response to our complaints.  Their code density has been easily 20-30% better
than MIT pcc68, and their claims of 2-4 x speedup are not exaggerated for
many types of code (array indexing, switches, loops, etc).  All in all, it
is an EXCELLENT compiler.  Contact Green Hills at 818-796-6543.

--Chris Ryland, IMAGEN

kent@oblio.UUCP (Kent Peacock) (01/19/85)

You might also want to consider the SGS 68000 compiler from AT&T.
I spent some time awhile back tuning a version of the Stanford compiler
(originally from MIT) to bring it close to the Green Hills compiler,
which we also had for evaluation. I would say that the improvements
brought the Stanford compiler from about 15% larger to less than 5% larger
code. Most of the changes were obvious and took about 1 man-week to put in.
When I changed companies, and compared the density of the tuned compiler
with the SGS compiler, the SGS 68000 compiler came out about 2% better.

The bottom line: the SGS compiler is pretty close to the Green Hills
compiler in code density, and is written in C and based on PCC2.
As I recall, the Green Hills compiler is written in PASCAL, which is
good or bad, depending on your viewpoint (:-).
The compiler I worked on is being used by Dialogic Systems for their
own 68000-based product. I don't know if they are interested in
distributing it.

Kent Peacock
Counterpoint Computers