to how to solve specific coding problems), there are also a number of higher
level observations to be made.
-For example, I have found that the main challenge in solving a problem, is
+For example, I have found that the main challenge in creating solutions, is
defining the actual problem you want to solve. This is clearly visible in the
specification of MontiumC: If you don't know what the goals are, you can't
-really work towards them. But, on a smaller scale, this also holds on a smaller
-scale. When, during coding you encounter a problem, it's often easy to try to
-solve that problem. However, after stacking a few small solutions on top of each
+really work towards them. But this also holds on a smaller
+scale. When, during coding you encounter a problem, it's often easy to
+solve just that problem. However, after stacking a few small solutions on top of each
other, things get complicated real fast. Then, it helps to take a step back and
try to find the bigger problem you are trying to solve, and evaluate
subsolutions in that perspective.
During my (limited amount of) work with the new hardware design, it became
quickly apparent that trying to design the hardware in an optimal way, was
completely impossible (when trying to stay within area and power constraints).
-The most important issue in this design is finding the balance between two sides
+The most important issue here is finding the balance between two sides
of a tradeoff, which was quite often hardware vs compiler complexity. Especially
this last issue makes it very clear that when designing hardware, the supporting
tooling should be designed in parallel, to prevent the tooling from needing to
These limitations are also visible when working with the old hardware: The
hardware poses a lot of limitations on its input, which makes it quite hard to
-build a proper compiler, that can reliably compile anything that it is supposed
+build a proper compiler that can reliably compile anything that it is supposed
to. Again, adapting the hardware to support the compiler, has the potential to
make the compiler considerably less complex and more reliable, at the cost of
larger hardware complexity, area and power consumption.
+However, when looking at the end result, I can conclude that the frontend has
+indeed improved a lot. Even though there are not as many features added to
+MontiumC as hoped, the existing features are more reliably supported now. The
+improvements in the frontend have allowed the backend to become simpler as
+well. Further improvement in this area is still possible, but there are a lot
+of things that the frontend simply cannot deal with, since it requires more
+hardware-specific knowledge or timing information, which the frontend does not
+have.
+
+Using the LLVM for developing the frontend has turned out to work quite well.
+It provides a lot of support code to simplify transforming of code. Also, the
+library-oriented architecture makes it easy to reuse (small) parts of the
+system, while leaving out other parts. In some cases the LLVM code is less
+suitable, but this is mostly solvable and should be less of an issue once the
+new hardware is finished.
+
All in all, I feel that this internship has worked out quite well. The people
were cooperating, the job was fun yet challenging and the result is
well-received.
projects / matthijs / projects / internship.git / blobdiff