Release Notes

This is an alpha release of the Sequoia compiler and runtime system which only implements the bulk of the Sequoia language, and can only target the Cell processor currently. This version requires Cell SDK 2.1. In addition, there are bound to be numerous bugs and issues in general, and so any early users are encouraged to post any and all questions and comments in the user forum, where we will do our best to address them. The purpose of this release is to let brave users play with the system and language. As we update and release a more general runtime API, it will become much easier to develop backends/runtimes to target different systems without modification to the core compiler.

Please see the main documentation for more information.

This release has the following limitations/issues:

• The C if and else statements, but no other C control flow statements (for, while, switch, do) can be used.
• Neither inline functions, nor using the return statement from within an inner task, are supported.
• The compiler can target the Cell abstract machine model illustrated below, though data and control may only be mapped to levels 0 and 2, not to level 1. That is, the Cell's "aggregate LS" virtual level is not supported in this alpha release.
• Only innermost mappar or mapreduce loops that are mapped to level 0 in the Cell machine model may be software-pipelined.

The README file in the release download contains installation instructions. We are hoping to release support for SMP in several weeks.