[TUHS] PCC for the i386
Charles H Sauer
sauer at technologists.com
Fri Jul 12 05:39:48 AEST 2019
Dell SVR4 included both pcc & gcc. gcc was used to build the system.
I think Richard Wirt's group at Intel contributed to optimization for
486, IIRC, probably for gcc, possibly for pcc.
I assume AIX/386 used pcc, but Clem likely knows for sure.
Charlie
On 7/11/2019 12:05 PM, Clem Cole wrote:
> Yup, that was Steve Ward's folks in the MIT/RTS group - it was the NU
> computer work. John Siber did most of the compiler work (funny, Steve
> Johnson and I were talking about some of that work last night at the
> UNIX50 party last night). tjt wrote the 68K assembler ward's folks
> used. I don't remember where the Z8000 assembler came, but I'm petty
> sure that the Intel assembler and some of the tools other John had
> brought back from his summers in MH.
>
> I think (but don't know for sure) the Intel 8086 assembler was done at
> AT&T first. IIRC it may have come out of Dale's group in Columbus. I
> do know Dale's group had done a Z80 C Compiler using the Ritchie
> Compiler at some point in 1978 timeframe (and at one time I had, but can
> not seem to find it, in my archives).
>
> When Intel released the 386, I believe the AT&T 8086 assembler was
> updated for the new 32 instructions; although who did that/where was
> done, I'm not sure.
>
> Steve is probably the best source for most of this as he managed the
> team in Summit doing the different AT&T front and back ends when they
> tried to centralize the compiler work for UNIX.
>
> On Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 12:48 PM Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com
> <mailto:imp at bsdimp.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 10:31 AM Clem cole <clemc at ccc.com
> <mailto:clemc at ccc.com>> wrote:
>
> By the time of 4.2 the switch from the Ritchie and Johnson
> compilers at UCB had begun. Remember the primary output of Rms
> at that point was emacs and gcc.
>
> CSRG wanted the different backends for C. ThAts it. Besides
> the vax, Rms had done 68000 and 386 back ends then.
>
> With the original system V, all of AT&T, Intel and IBM paid
> Interactive Systems Corp (aka ISC) to port the System V/Vax code
> to a 386 ps/2 and an Intel reference system that used an ISA
> bus. This would be eventually released in source at the 386
> port from AT&T. As part of the contract summit supplied the
> compiler
>
> I know the AT&T assembler with it’s backwards syntax from Intel
> was done before rms did his. He was compatible with the summit
> assembler. I don’t remember who’s 386 backend came out first.
> I think is was the summit compiler but you needed a system v
> license which UCB did not have.
>
>
> There's also a fair amount of work at MIT to do Intel code
> generation for 8086 (small mode) that was extended by Queens College
> London (I think, I gotta grab the tapes again) to do large mode.
> I've run into this looking for a compiler for the Venix source
> restoration project I've been tilting at. I found those based on a
> cryptic comment I found somewhere online about the tech behind Venix
> that wasn't from AT&T. I don't know if ISC started with them as a
> base or not, nor really how the MIT compilers came about, but they
> claim to be PCC based somehow. Don't know if this helps you on your
> quest... BTW, I found these when I found the latest pcc-restoration
> sources didn't have a working i86 backend anymore (there was once
> one for Minux, but when I built it I couldn't get it to generate
> sensible code at all).
>
> Warner
>
> Clem
>
> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be almost
> but not quite.
>
> On Jul 11, 2019, at 8:50 AM, Jason Stevens
> <jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com
> <mailto:jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com>> wrote:
>
>> That would make sense. I was able to find some info on PCC2 here
>>
>> http://doc.cat-v.org/unix/unix-before-berkeley/
>>
>> I'm guessing along with the adoption of emacs the csrg must
>> have been further gnu synergy... Or maybe PCC2 just wasn't
>> available outside of the labs?
>>
>> Or maybe by '88 gcc was already usurping many of the c
>> compilers of the era.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 11, 2019 at 11:37 PM +0800, "Clem cole"
>> <clemc at ccc.com <mailto:clemc at ccc.com>> wrote:
>>
>> I believe the pcc/386 came out of Steve Johnson team at
>> Summit with the PCC2 work.
>>
>> Sent from my PDP-7 Running UNIX V0 expect things to be
>> almost but not quite.
>>
>> On Jul 11, 2019, at 7:53 AM, Jason Stevens
>> <jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com
>> <mailto:jsteve at superglobalmegacorp.com>> wrote:
>>
>>> Does anyone know where the 386 port from PCC came from?
>>>
>>> __ __
>>>
>>> While trying to build a Tahoe userland for the i386, it
>>> seems that everything was built with GCC…
>>>
>>> Was there a PCC for the i386 around ’88-90? It seems
>>> after the rapid demise of the Tahoe/Harris
>>>
>>> HCX-9 that the non Vax/HCX-9 platforms had moved to GCC?____
>>>
>>> __ __
>>>
>>> Also anyone know any good test software for LIBC? I’ve
>>> been tracing through some____
>>>
>>> strange issues rebuilding LIBC from Tahoe, where I had to
>>> include some bits from____
>>>
>>> Reno to get diropen to actually work. I would imagine
>>> there ought to have been some____
>>>
>>> platform exercise code to make sure things were actually
>>> working instead of say____
>>>
>>> building as much as you can, and playing rogue for a few
>>> hours to make sure____
>>>
>>> its stable enough.
>>>
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