[PLUG] Porting app from Windows to Linux

William A Morita wamorita at hevanet.com
Thu Jun 16 01:44:27 UTC 2005


Keith,

Having worked 6 years on C compilers, you question is almost "non-sensical".

C is an easier way to write assembly.  I wrote in assembly for the first 10
years of my career.  With a good C compiler and some careful coding, you
should be able to get close to the "efficiency" of writing in assembly.

As for good compilers, Intel markets compilers (C and C++) that do *very*
good code generation and are GCC compatible.  This means porting using GCC
and tightening the screws with the Intel compiler.

Remember 90% of the execution time is typically spent in 10% (or less) of
the code.  Using profiling tools you should be able to isolate the 10%.  The
efficiency of the other 90% is of no consequence.

- Bill 

wamorita at hevanet.com 


-----Original Message-----
From: plug-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org
[mailto:plug-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Keith Lofstrom
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 11:45 AM
To: PLUG
Subject: [PLUG] Porting app from Windows to Linux


Greetings, Keith Lofstrom reporting live from the Design Automation
Conference in Anaheim CA.  These are the folks that make software tools for
chip design.  About 700 companies, 5000 exhibitor staff, 500K square feet.
Hundreds of companies have Linux offerings.  There was one company showing
off their 256-CPU + Hardware Acceleration "Optical Proximity Correction"
server (using FreeBSD).  IBM and Intel and AMD are showing off their
clusters - all Linux, of course .  A lot of the big CAD tools require them.

One small company, run by a friend, has a personal IC layout tool.
The tool runs under Windoze right now, but he is strongly motivated to port
it to Linux.  It is mostly written in lemonade C, with some chunks of
acceleration code written directly in assembler.
The assembler code is simple data-structure in, data-structure out, with no
API calls.  He uses Trolltech QT for the GUI interface.

So, questions for the group:

1) What tools are available to help port the C and the assembler code?

2) Are there some good porting cookbooks out there?

This guy is ready to jump in.  How can we help make his experience speedy
and pleasurable?

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs
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