Entries tagged with phoenix framework - Channel 9

Russell Hadley: The Route to C++ Code Optimization

Charles — Tue, 20 May 2008 18:43:14 GMT

It's nice to write clean code (code that looks good, is organized, is easy for others to understand by reading it, etc). As developers we get to use great tools to implement algorithms in our favorite languages. The act of composing a program is much like that of writing a story or, in some cases, a poem :) But the underlying hardware isn't much interested in intelligent class hierachies and easy-to-understand lines of programming language syntax. Processors do not speak C++ or Java or C# or VB, etc.

The focus of this interview is mapping the (long and complicated)path to executable machine code that the machine natively understands and acts upon, bringing your code to life. How does this work, exactly?

Russell Hadley is a senior developer on the C++ team here at Microsoft and he spends his days (and nights, ocassionally) writing code that takes the front-end compilation linear (flattened) blob and turns it into highly optimized machine code patterns that the processor can execute in a highly efficient manner.

This is a deep interview with lots of whiteboarding, but it is shallow enough so you won't drown if you can't swim very well. Enjoy. This is another great conversation with one of the C++ experts who live in Building 41.

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Andy Ayers: Understanding the Phoenix Compiler Framework

Charles — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:19:36 GMT

The compiler gurus over in CTP of the Phoenix Compiler Framework. It's been a while since we've learned about Phoenix here on Channel 9 so we thought it necessary to find out what's going on with the soon-to-be de facto compiler technology for all of Microsoft's products.

Andy Ayers is an Architect on the Phoenix team. He sits down with us to dig into the details of Phoenix and address it's current state, history and future (no whiteboarding here, but this is still quite deep. There is a cool demo at the end of the interview.) . It's very interesting to note that the Phoenix team has tested the scalability and power of their pluggable (extensible) compiler framework on the likes of Windows. Turns out Phoenix handles such a large task (compiling Windows) very well. This new compiler technology has been designed with many-core in mind. This means Phoenix is our most parallelized compiler which adds up to shorter compilation time. As usual, the C++ team is ahead of the curve when it comes to preparing for the concurrent future.

Tune in and learn all about the future of Microsoft's compiler technology from one of the minds behind it all. The future is very bright indeed!

Enjoy!

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