Blackbird^® - HPEC Compiler

The Blackbird Solution

Blackbird descends from SGI's highly regarded MIPSPro compiler. Blackbird features a full set of both conventional and cutting-edge optimizations, including interprocedural optimizations, loop nest optimizers, a mechanism for feedback, automatic parallelization, and a world-class software pipeliner. Blackbird's EDG-powered front-end supports C (including the C99 standard and many GNU extensions) and C++. The back-end supports RISC, VLIW, and superscalar targets using a modular architecture description facility. Blackbird's modular design with a well-documented intermediate representation facilitates the development of new optimizations. The extensive testing and engineering in Blackbird enables developers to focus on the extensions, rather than on building a complete compiler from scratch.

The Blackbird compiler is the product of over 200 person-years of engineering at SGI. The code base is exceptionally well documented, clean, and stable. Its optimizations have been tested and honed on a substantial set of industrial applications, resulting in consistently good performance. Blackbird is designed to provide an optimal combination of speed, reliability, and correctness within the most demanding of commercial settings.