Apple is making its apps LLVM-based now? Doesn't that mean they could soon push for ARM CPUs in Mac OS, too?
Now they already can, technically (via fat binaries, they've already been through multiple architectural transitions), the interesting part is they could now go through these transitions without developers having to be involved.
It also means the end of Universal binaries as Apple can thin the compiled app for each target device.
the PPC switch over was painful, as was the 32 versus 64 bit era. They want to avoid that in the future.
Use of SIMD intrinsics are a tougher nut, but I've actually been playing with them at an IR level for hobby stuff and I declare its not intractable.
I know, I play with a hobby llvm backend that retargets.
How so? I recall it being amazingly painless.
Here's a nice article describing it:
> This means that apps can automatically “take advantage of new processor capabilities we might be adding in the future, without you re-submitting to the store.”
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/06/17/apples-biggest-develo...
I play writing LLVM backends, and its entirely viable to even do things like rewrite float80 and other assumptions that a front-end has made for a particular target.
There will be ISAs sufficiently different that you cannot make bitcode generated when targetting one not be massaged to fit another, but they are not mainstream. The mainstream are all increasingly similar 64-bit targets.