AVK RVCT To LIVM Tool Chain Transition

Abstract

RVCT(Real View Compiler Tool) is a based on arm proprietary compiler technology using armcc for C/C++ compilation. v8AVK(ARMv8 Architecture Validation Kit) is a set of suites containing test-cases which is used to qualify the compliance of any core implementation as defined in the architecture specification. V8AVS(ARMv8 Architecture Validation Suite) product had been compliant and was using RVCT based tool chain for architecture validation. LLVM(Low Level Virtual Machine) is new compiler technology which ARM is adopting for its better configurable features and ease of optimization extensions and wide spread adaptability for being open source based. Under the Architecture validation group at ARM, this project aims at the task to convert the code base of ARMv8 AVK that is only RVCT tool chain compliant into one that supports both LLVM and RVCT compliant. The converted code is to be qualified on the simulator to ensure that the LLVM tool chain had generated the appropriate code and to provide feedback on the tool chain and get associated bugs in tool chain fixed if the code conversion behavior is inconsistent. This project list down the various aspects of this porting work to ensure how this transition path was made smoother to ensure thousands of tests were made compliant across RVCT and LLVM. There are different parts of the tool chain like the linker, compiler and assembler. This project primarily focuses on the compiler code base such that the LLVM support is enabled for AVK.