[LAD] Project proposition: llvm based dsp engine

[nescivi]

Hiho,

Nick Collins has been working on some stuff like this for SuperCollider.
Haven't tried it on Linux yet, though, but that's more because of lack of 
time.

sincerely,
Marije

On Monday 06 December 2010 12:10:02 Maurizio De Cecco wrote:
> I have been looking for a while to  LLVM as a possible technology to
> build a DSP execution engine, providing the runtime flexibility needed
> by real-time interactive DSP applications (like patcher languages), or
> by plug-in based processors, and in the same moment
> the powerful link time optimizations that such a system can provide.
> 
> Such a task is daunting for a single developer project like mine, but it
> may become feasible if  such engine could be useful for multiple
> projects, so to become a community initiative (i am sending this
> mail to the Linux Audio Developers mailing list and to the LLVM mailing
> list, feel free to send it elsewhere if you find it useful).
> 
> So, I'll explain in a few lines exactly what i thinking of, and i
> propose that if anybody is interested in such initiative she/he can
> contact me directly, and we will see if there is enough interest
> for actually start something. Of course, i may also miss an existing
> project on the same field, in this case, let me know :->.
> 
> The idea is the following: build a tool kit, based on LLVM, to
> dynamically build the execution chain of DSP applications; almost all
> DSP applications using plug-ins have something of this kind.
> This toolkit will be based on code generation and JIT, and should have a
> flexible architecture so to accomodate multiple plugin API/ABI, to be
> able to call, from the same execution chain, DSP operation written
> for different contexts (for example, LADSPA plug-ins, PD objects, and so
> on). The code generation would allow this integration for a very low run
> time cost.
> 
> But the most interesting part is actually providing a definition of
> native, LLVM compiled, plug-ins, and to use the LLVM link time
> optimizations for doing things like inlining, loop fusions etc, between
> different DSP operation; this can provide quite a speed improvement for
> those chains composed of simple operators.
> 
> The execution chain should be flexible enough to provide support for
> multi-rate synchronous data flows, and should include support for
> multiple threads execution (probably different chains for different
> threads).
> 
> To complete the project, let's add a library of DSP operators, a
> reasonable high level API to use it, and documentation to help the DSP
> application designer (i find the LLVM learning curve quite steep :).
> 
> Contact maurizio at dececco.name if you are interest in setting up such a
> project; if enough developers with the right skills and enough interest
> are found I'll set up a project mailing list to further discuss the
> subject.
> 
> Cordially,
>   Maurizio
> 
> 
> __________
> Maurizio De Cecco  -
> Music:    http://www.myspace.com/mauriziodececco
> Blog:     http://maurizio.dececco.name/
> Software: http://www.jmax-phoenix.org/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Linux-audio-dev mailing list
> Linux-audio-dev at lists.linuxaudio.org
> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev