LLVM Clang 64-bit ARM (AArch64) Now Supports NEON

Written by Michael Larabel in LLVM on 1 August 2013 at 12:38 PM EDT. Add A Comment
LLVM
The 64-bit ARM back-end to the LLVM/Clang compiler now supports generating NEON instructions for AArch64.

NEON is ARM's advanced SIMD instruction set extension for benefiting multimedia and signal processing workloads. ARM NEON has been present going back to the 32-bit Cortex-A8/A9 days and has been supported by the 32-bit compiler back-ends for GCC and Clang. While LLVM/Clang has had initial AArch64 support for several months, the 64-bit ARM back-end hasn't been able to generate NEON instructions.

As of today with this Clang commit and this LLVM commit, the 64-bit ARM support includes this very performance beneficial advanced SIMD instruction set.

This 64-bit ARM NEON support is another important new feature for the LLVM 3.4 release that's likely to be out before year's end.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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