Search icon CANCEL
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
Learn LLVM 12

You're reading from   Learn LLVM 12 A beginner's guide to learning LLVM compiler tools and core libraries with C++

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in May 2021
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781839213502
Length 392 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
Tools
Arrow right icon
Author (1):
Arrow left icon
Kai Nacke Kai Nacke
Author Profile Icon Kai Nacke
Kai Nacke
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

Table of Contents (17) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Section 1 – The Basics of Compiler Construction with LLVM
2. Chapter 1: Installing LLVM FREE CHAPTER 3. Chapter 2: Touring the LLVM Source 4. Chapter 3: The Structure of a Compiler 5. Section 2 – From Source to Machine Code Generation
6. Chapter 4: Turning the Source File into an Abstract Syntax Tree 7. Chapter 5: Basics of IR Code Generation 8. Chapter 6: IR Generation for High-Level Language Constructs 9. Chapter 7: Advanced IR Generation 10. Chapter 8: Optimizing IR 11. Section 3 –Taking LLVM to the Next Level
12. Chapter 9: Instruction Selection 13. Chapter 10: JIT Compilation 14. Chapter 11: Debugging Using LLVM Tools 15. Chapter 12: Create Your Own Backend 16. Other Books You May Enjoy

Supporting new machine instructions

The CPU you are targeting may have machine instructions not yet supported by LLVM. For example, manufacturers using the MIPS architecture often add special instructions to the core MIPS instruction set. The specification of the RISC-V instruction set explicitly allows manufacturers to add new instructions. Or you are adding a completely new backend, and then you must add the instructions of the CPU. In the next section, we will add assembler support for a single, new machine instruction to an LLVM backend.

Adding a new instruction to the assembler and code generation

New machine instructions are usually tied to a certain CPU feature. Then the new instruction is only recognized if the user has selected the feature using the --mattr= option to llc.

As an example, we will add a new machine instruction to the MIPS backend. The imaginary, new machine instruction first squares the value of the two input registers $2 and $3 and assigns the sum...

lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at $19.99/month. Cancel anytime