Re: GNAT function calling overhead

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Larry says:

"Actually, I would hope GNAT funds would be devoted toward correctness
on the largest possible number of platforms.  Then let commercial
vendors sell high-performance compilers to those who need high performance."

I am not quite sure what "GNAT funds" means here. If it means the money
we have left for the remaining 84 days of the contract, then this will
be devoted to finishing off the implementation of Ada 95, and fixing bugs.

If you mean the funds that SGI, Labtek, ACT etc generate for maintenance
of GNAT, those will be directed in whatever manner corresponds to customer
needs, and high performance will definitely be one of these needs. At that
point extension of GNAT to new platforms will happen only if volunteers
do ports, or if people want ports to appear and can pay for them.

But in any case, it has always been our intention to generate a 
high-performance compiler that will compete on its own terms. This
will help push the quality barrier for all Ada 95 compilers, which
can only help users of the language, no matter what compiler they
are using.

Remember that the ground on which we are building GNAT, namely GCC, is
itself a high performance system. On many machines, GCC is the fastest
C compiler available. On some systems, such as Nextstep, it is the ONLY
C compiler available. 

Of course there are lots more optimizations that could be done to improve
GNAT, but then that's a statement that can be made about most Ada
compilers!

Note that a relatively small amount of the NYU resources (which are after
all fairly limited), has been spent on generating new ports. Yet there
are lots of ports of GNAT. These have come from volunteers around the
world. I am sure that this will continue to occur!