Today's TASKING is the culmination of 25 years of compiler innovation. Industry leading names like Intermetrics, BSO, and Whitesmiths are part of the TASKING heritage. We continue to be true to this legacy by creating new excitement in compiler technology.
TASKING's new Viper compilers are being designed with specific support for the semiconductor technology of preference for embedded communication applications - DSPs, embedded communication microcontrollers and reconfigurable RISC cores. Specific features to look for include:
- Language extensions to support DSP (including fractional and complex) datatypes, addressing modes, saturation, circular buffers, storage qualifiers and operators.
- Easy integration of C, C++ with assembly code (including legacy code).
- Advanced/Profile directed Optimizations:
- Loop reconstruction, prepare for vectorization
- Application-wide scope for optimizations
- Latest scheduling techniques for VLIW-like architectures
Altium's new TASKING compiler based on Viper technology is one that uses an extensible target description language to generate the mechanics of a target compiler automatically. This enables Altium to provide emerging semiconductor technology with high quality, high performance tools more quickly. Another benefit of this new architecture is the modular nature of the compiler. The new modular framework takes a revolutionary approach to adaptability, as it allows full customization of its optimization processes. All modules that are part of the code generation process - including all optimization modules - communicate via an internal target-independent compiler protocol. This well-defined interface between modules allows us to present to developers of SOC and other configurable core-based silicon an easily customizable compiler. Third parties will be able to easily add proprietary optimization modules allowing for project-based compiler tuning.
Altium also develops features to speed application development. These include mechanisms that invoke the latest methodologies in automated completeness verification, modular testing, application-wide optimization analysis and assembler/disassembler generation. An additional innovation to help speed development produces very efficient code for your application, based on the knowledge of the commercial off-the shelf communication protocol products and operating systems you are using. This does not only give you the smallest and tightest code possible, but it also helps you to write and debug your code much faster.
More on Altium's next-generation Viper compiler technology.