Architecture description languages for retargetable compilation

Retargetable compilation has been the subject of some study over the years. This work is motivated by the need to develop a single compiler infrastructure for a range of possible target architectures. Technology trends point to the growth of application-specific programmable systems, which makes it doubly important that we develop efficient retargetable compilation infrastructures. The first need for this is in directly supporting the different target architectures that are likely to be developed to fuel these trends. The second, and possibly more important, need is in the design space exploration for the instruction set architecture and microarchitecture of the processor under development. The evaluation of any candidate architecture needs a compiler to map the applications to the architecture and a simulator to measure the performance. Because it is desirable to evaluate multiple candidates, a retargetable compiler (and simulator) is highly valuable.