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0 pointschrisseaton8y ago0 comments

I disagree. I think saying that it's the lowered intermediate representation in the Go compiler pipeline is a really good description. It's equivalent to the LIR in Java's C2 compiler. I'm not sure what the equivalent is in .net.

Fundamentally, it's a representation and it's intermediate isn't it?

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uluyol8y ago

No, not really. Go's assembly might be considered somewhat higher level than regular assembly code, but it's certainly architecture specific. The examples highlighted use x86 SIMD instructions unavailable on other architectures.

Freedoms taken by the go assemblers also seem to be decreasing as the compiler becomes smarter. E.g. instruction reordering is no longer performed (https://github.com/golang/go/issues/15837).

You can read about the assemblers here: https://golang.org/doc/asm

chrisseatonOP8y ago

Yes I know it's architecture specific. Many lowered IRs are. The equivalent I gave, Java's C2 IR, is also architecture specific, which is why I used it.

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