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A History of C Compilers – Part 1: Performance, Portability and Freedom


Let's talk compilers with part one of a whistle stop tour of their history

Almost all other software for these new architectures, from operating systems to machine learning tools, depends on having available performant compilers for C, C++, and more specialized C-like languages, such as that used for GPU kernels in Nvidia’s CUDA. By the early 1990s the availability of Linux as a free Unix-like operating system for the x86 and other architectures, along with GCC as a high-quality C compiler, meant that, with a few exceptions, commercial competitors struggled to compete. aarch64, alpha, arc, arm, avr, bfin, c6x,cr16, cris, csky, epiphany, fr30, frv, gcn, h8300, i386,ia64, iq2000, lm32, m32c, m32r, m68k, more, mep, microblaze, mips, mmix,mn10300, moxie, msp430, nds32, nios2, nvptx, pa, pdp11, pru, riscv, rl78, rs6000, rx, s390, sh, sparc, stormy16, tilegx, tilepro, v850, vax, visium, xtensa.

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