Intel and Chinese Academy of Sciences Release Research Compiler for Intel Itanium Processor Family.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM 

BERLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 29, 2003

Intel Corporation and the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing have released version 2.0 of the Open Research Compiler (ORC) for the Intel(R) Itanium(R) processor family. This set of open source compiler tools for Linux(1) is aimed at researchers doing advanced compiler and micro-architecture research and adds several new features over the earlier release.

The compiler's new features can help compiler researchers understand how memory hierarchy optimizations, C++ programming features, and optimizations across functions can be implemented for the Itanium architecture. ORC 2.0 includes performance analysis tools to help researchers understand program hot spots and bottlenecks.

"Intel's collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences continues to produce impressive results. The 2.0 upgrade to the Open Research Compiler will accelerate research with the Itanium microprocessor by providing a scalable, flexible platform for exploring new code generation and optimization techniques," said Justin Rattner, Intel senior fellow, Enterprise Platform Group and director of Intel's Microprocessor Research Labs.

"The advanced features in the compiler framework deliver superb functionality on the Itanium processor family architecture," said Mr. Li Guojie, director of ICT, Chinese Academy of Science. "This state-of-the-art framework has established ORC as a top research vehicle and led to innovations on compiler and processor technologies from the research community in China and around the world."

This research compiler is part of Intel's activities in this area. Intel also offers product-quality compilers and performance analysis tools for developers. The Intel C++ Compilers and Intel Fortran Compilers implement innovative optimization techniques for IA32 and Itanium processor families. Intel uses its extensive knowledge of microprocessor architecture and advanced compiler methods to develop compilers with outstanding application performance for mission-critical and high-performance applications.

Since its release in 2002, the Open Research Compiler has proven to be popular with the research community, with over 4,000 downloads of the code. Many research groups at universities and institutes have adopted ORC as the infrastructure for their compiler and computer architecture research projects.

"ORC has made remarkable contributions to the research community. This compiler framework has enabled a wide spectrum of research activities, from novel machine dependent optimizations and foundational compiler study to multithreading and future microprocessor features," said Professor Pen-Chung Yew, head of department of computer science and engineering, University of Minnesota.

Compilers and Computers

Compilers are like translators; they translate programming languages like C, C++ and FORTRAN, and turn them into machine language (the language computers understand). The more efficiently this translation can be done, the more performance a computer can provide to the software. Modern processors like those in the Itanium processor family have multiple instruction units and can perform multiple tasks in parallel. Modern compilers must be able to identify parallelism in the source code and assign tasks to keep all the instruction units busy. As microprocessor architecture advances, it is critical to move compiler techniques along in parallel.

The ORC 2.0 uses modular compiler components that permit experimentation with each "module" performing a specific optimization task. This allows researchers to quickly test different techniques against the basic compiler framework. The compiler framework also comes with infrastructure additions such as profiling and region formation.

The ORC 2.0 source code is available from http://ipf-orc.sourceforge.net. Information about academic sponsorship is available at www.intel.com/research/university/index.htm. Information and evaluations versions of Intel's product-quality compilers for Windows(1) and Linux can be found at http://www.intel.com/software/products. Also available from this site are no cost, non-commercial versions of Intel's Linux compilers for the academic, hobbyist, and Linux communities.

Intel has developed a uniquely decentralized research model with more than 70 labs located around the world. Teams from the Programming Systems Lab and Intel China Research Center in Beijing, China have collaborated with the Institute for Computing Technology on the Open Research Compiler project. The Intel China Research Center was established in 1998 and currently employs more than 40 computer research scientists and engineers working in research areas such as computer vision, media, Bayesian networks, compilers and tools.

About the Institute for Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

The Institute for Computing Technology (ICT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is the first academic institution of computing research in China. It is the birthplace of China's first computer, and a research and development center for China's current high-performance computers. The key research fields include: high-performance computing and grid computing environment, network and digital technology, knowledge processing and intelligent Internet software, SoC core technology, operating system and information security and bioinformatics.

About Intel

Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.

Note to Editors: Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

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