Pranith's e-space

llvm

pranith — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 20:07:26 +0000

It is great to see innovation in the compiler space.

I happened to use LLVM for a compiler project and it is amazing to see how flexible the framework is.

LLVM was created by Chris Lattner at UIUC in the course of his PhD research.
It really undermines the need to be a very good programmer to create a project on that scale. Apple employed Chris to adopt LLVM to MAC OS X as they were stuck with GCC version 4.2 as the later version of GCC moved to GPL v3.

The Clang frontend recently has advanced enough to be able to build a linux kernel. Also XCode includes LLVM-clang.

Apparently clang is much faster at building code and also gives more meaningful error messages. Though the performance difference in terms of actual binary is not huge, the scope for improvement is very high as it is easier to implement optimizations than in GCC.

The BSD projects have been looking for quite some time to adopt a compiler with a more appropriate license, since the license of GCC is restrictive when compared to BSD license. There were quite some BSD licensed compiler projects in between, most notable PCC. But I am betting on LLVM to take the place of GCC in the BSD world pretty soon.

It is always good to have competing projects just to keep the people involved on their toes and foster innovation.

linux kernel with icc – the intel c compiler

pranith — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 14:46:14 +0000

Found an interesting site which gives info about building a linux kernel with icc. I am currently working a lot with icc and was looking at how good/better it is than gcc.

The result: not that great. Most of Intel’s compiler work is at present directed towards Itanium. I was hoping that since icc does not have to support as many architectures as gcc, it would have many platform specific optimizations. But that does not seem to be the case.

May be some day I will get around to building the kernel with icc and updating the kernels…

India won the Cricket World Cup!

pranith — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 20:51:56 +0000

Yes, and we are all rejoicing right now!

I’ve been terribly disappointed with India in all the previous world cups. I was a bit skeptical going into this world cup.

Good that I was not let down

Custom linux kernel for Core2 processors for Debian/Ubuntu

pranith — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 02:43:38 +0000

The distro shipped kernel is not optimized for a particular processor. So I made a kernel image optimized for core2 processors. I thought it might be useful for others like me who are looking for an optimized kernel for their Debian/Ubuntu systems.

You can download the debs here.

You can also find the instructions for installing/building these images for your systems in the wiki pages here.

Drop a mail if you want me to host a custom kernel you built for any other processors out there. I will be glad to host them and point a link there.

Njoi

So far so good…

pranith — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 01:30:38 +0000

Been here in Atlanta for more than 2 months now. It’s been good to me so far

The work I am doing is pretty interesting. I need to find the effect of parallelizing an executable has on the cache hit/miss ratio. Basically, we need to come up with a model where we consider the cache on the speedup gained when parallelized.

Been around Atlanta quite a bit, from Haveli to Coca Cola world to the worlds largest aquarium Georgia Aquarium.
The Pakistani restaurant Tandoors was something. Spicy, tangy food.

Swaminarayan temple is one place where you can find your inner peace(if you have any!).

The fall colors are pretty awesome and the winter is setting in, gives me the chills(both mentally and physically). I hate extreme winters, and people are already describing the winters here in a scary way.

Hope it is not as bad as they make it to seem.

Book library in Hyderabad

pranith — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:34:33 +0000

Hey All,

iloveread.in has now come to Hyderabad. You can check it out here:

http://www.iloveread.in

You can place your order online and the book will be delivered to you at the address mentioned.

If you do not find any books in the catalog, just mail to hyd at iloveread.in and the book will be added within due time.

So all book enthusiasts of Hyderabad, join in and enjoy reading

Long time…

pranith — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 05:37:31 +0000

Hey,

been a long time since I posted. The last few months have been pretty busy for me. What with all the exams(!!) I had to give, the preparation, the tensions running high etc., Now that I am all done with my exams and applications, I have some time to get back to my blog… atleast _some_ time

Will be going home pretty soon. Also I plan to spend the new years at home. Been quite a long time since I was at home on new years eve.

Lots of things have happened on the personal front too. Some shakeups, some relations gone sour. The past 2 months were a great learning experience. I’ve learnt a lot on how to handle relations. 2009 on the whole has been a good year, not great.

Whats up next? Been trying to move to Hyderabad. I am really in a dilemma as to how good a decision this is. But I think I really need to be there. More on this later…

That is all for now.

Sleepless

pranith — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:13:19 +0000

Insomnia is a bitch. And this bitch is after me for quite sometime now. It’s a cascading effect you know. One day you stay up late watching some episode and sleep late. The next day you wake up a bit late, then again that night you sleep late and so the vicious cycle continues.

At this point of time, I am pretty unsatisfied(not dissatisfied). I have too many cravings which need to be quenched. Having too many things to do at the same time, is not a pretty situation. You are pulled in too many directions at one time.

So, here is some fodder for myself and whoever cares

Do One Thing and Do It Well.

Time to sleep, ah, not sleepy. Something else then

Slumber…

pranith — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:57:23 +0000

I really don’t know why, but I’ve not been able to sleep today. Solved an spoj problem, and that was it. Too wired to sleep I guess. Came across this great video on youtube(which I use heavily to pass time, thanks google ), watch it till atleast the middle. That’s when it starts to get interesting.

Borat and Bruno

pranith — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 07:24:19 +0000

Am a sucker for good movies. I love meaningful ones with a distinct storyline. Notice the ‘distinct’ part. This is the reason I’ve started to loathe the recent bollywood movies.

I really really really love comedy movies. I love comedy in general. Be it pranks, tricks etc., What else does one need to be humored?

Borat is one movie I would love everyone to watch. It is the greatest modern time comedy ever. It is actually everything mixed in one. Pranking people live, making them look like idiots, gags etc., It has everything. Go watch some youtube videos of this awesome movie.

Now Sacha Baron Cohen, the lead actor of this movie is well known for fooling people. You must have heard about the Ali-G show. He pranks everyone from ministers to senate members. A new movie of his, Bruno, similar in plot to Borat was released yesterday. He plays a gay dumb foreign guy and has everyone fooled!

Eageeerly waiting for this movie to come out here in India. Will be going to see it the first day.