LLVM Weekly - #74, Jun 1st 2015
LLVM Weekly - #74, Jun 1st 2015
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<http://llvmweekly.org/issue/74>Welcome to the seventy-fourth issue of LLVM Weekly, a weekly newsletter
(published every Monday) covering developments in LLVM, Clang, and related
projects. LLVM Weekly is brought to you by [Alex
Bradbury](http://asbradbury.org). Subscribe to future issues at
<http://llvmweekly.org> and pass it on to anyone else you think may be
interested. Please send any tips or feedback to <asb@asbradbury.org>, or
@llvmweekly or @asbradbury on Twitter.You may be interested in the [second RISC-V
workshop](https://blog.riscv.org/2015/04/registration-now-open-2nd-risc-v-workshop-june-29-30-2015/),
which will be held in Berkeley June 29-30. Early bird registration ends today,
but academics can register for free. My colleague Wei and I will be there
representing [lowRISC](http://www.lowrisc.org).## News and articles from around the web
[MPI-Checker](GitHub - 0ax1/MPI-Checker: Checks to verify the usage of the MPI API in C and C++ code, based on Clang’s Static Analyzer and Clang-Tidy.), a static analysis tool for
MPI code has been released. It is of course implemented using Clang's [Static
Analyzer framework](http://clang-analyzer.llvm.org/).The LLVM-HPC2 workshop will be held on November 15th, co-located with SC15.
The [call for
papers](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/86349) has
been published. Submissions are due by September 1st.## On the mailing lists
* The discussion about improving LLD has resumed. Rui Ueyama has [written
about his recent patch for a section-based PE/COFF
linker](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/86306). Sean
Silva argues that [refactoring might be a better
approach](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/86333).* Hans Wennborg has shared a [preliminary release plan for LLVM/Clang
3.7](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.clang.devel/42972). This
would see the codebase branched on the 14th of July with a release target of
the end of August. Tom Stellard has also shared a [schedule for the 3.6.2
release](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/86175). The
deadline for patches is June 15 with the release date targeted for June 29th.* Teresa Johnson has posted an [updated RFC of her ThinLTO implementation
plan](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/86282). There
are still concerns about the wrapping of LLVM bitcode in ELF. Alex Rosenberg
suggests [implementing an objcopy replacement for LLVM and extending bitcode
as necessary](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/86313)
as an alternative approach.* Chris Bieneman has posted a [status update on the quest to replace the
autoconf build system with
CMake](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/86248).* Quentin Colombet is [seeking benchmark
reports](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/86222) (or
indeed bugs!) for the recently added 'shrink wrapping'.* Matthias Braun has left a quick note for maintainers of out-of-tree targets
that [pristine register semantics have been modified
slightly](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/86291).* Chandler Carruth has posted some thoughts on [next steps for loop unrolling
analysis](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.llvm.devel/86137).## LLVM commits
* Codegen for memcpy on Thumb2 has been improved to make use of load/store
multiple (more details of how this works in the commit message, worth a read
for those interested). [r238473](rG450fbee6b2dc).* Popcount on x86 will now be implemented using a [lookup table in register
technique](http://wm.ite.pl/articles/sse-popcount.html).
[r238636](rG6ba9730a4ef3),
[r238652](rGcb58910ce8a9).* Work continues on reducing peak memory usage through optimisations to debug
info. [r238364](rG815a6eb55d8e).* Initial support for the `convergent` attribute has landed.
[r238264](rG85fa7d5037fe).* The documentation about the current state of LLVM's Phabricator has been
updated along with a call for volunteers to help develop necessary
improvements and modifications to Phabricator's PHP codebase.
[r238295](rG792b94c4327e).* MCJIT gained support for MIPS64r2 and MIPS64r6.
[r238424](rG9720283e994c).## Clang commits
* Clang's handling of `-fopenmp` has been rewritten.
[r238389](rG02083539a328).* The user documentation on profiling has been extended.
[r238504](rG46ab35d6809e).
Another Clang commit that should be called out specifically is that
__declspec is no longer treated as a core language extension by Clang,
but instead requires -fms-extensions or -fborland to be passed to
enable support for it. Support for __declspec is also enabled when
compiling CUDA code, but as a stopgap compatibility measure because
some of the CUDA headers are relying on it.
[r238238](rG674cf26892a7).
~Aaron