UltraSPARC: compiling for maximum floating-point performance

UltraSPARC-I is the first microprocessor from Sun Microsystems to implement the new 64-bit SPARC V9 architecture. UltraSPARC-I is a superscalar processor capable of issuing up to four instructions together and possesses several features designed to enable high performance on a variety of applications. While UltraSPARC-I maintains strict binary compatibility with and delivers excellent performance on thousands of existing 32-bit applications developed for other SPARC processors, even more benefit can be derived by using a compiler that specifically targets it. This paper discusses various features of UltraSPARC-I and the compiler techniques used to leverage them to obtain high performance on many floating point programs.