2018 LLVM Developers’ Meeting: C. Schafmeister “Lessons Learned Implementing Common Lisp with LLVM”

My group is developing Clasp (github.com/clasp-developers/clasp.git). It's a Common Lisp implementation that interoperates with C++ and uses llvm as the backend. It's something you might want to look at because it could change your options in the following ways: (1) Clasp interoperates with C++ - C++ libraries like graphics and physics engines can be easily exposed within Clasp Common Lisp. (See [link] ) (2) Clasp uses llvm as the backend - it generates llvm-ir from Common Lisp code and uses link time optimization to link C++ and Common Lisp generated llvm-ir. (3) Clasp uses the Memory Pool System garbage collector, which can be configured to minimize GC pause times to a programmer-defined level. (4) Clasp generates debug info and can be profiled with standard tools like dtrace and C++ functions, Common Lisp functions and GC functions are all profiled against each other. I'm a professor of Chemistry at Temple University - I'm developing Clasp to design molecules and materials - but it could be applied to a lot of other problems. Caveat: Clasp is not yet as performant as Steel Bank Common Lisp, but it uses the open source and highly configurable Cleavir compiler developed by Robert Strandh and we have incorporated inlining and are currently incorporating type inference. If you want to see a little bit more - I have a 25 min talk up on youtube that I presented a couple of weeks ago at the 2018 llvm developers meeting ( [this video] )

A growing group of us are implementing Clasp ( [link] ) - a new Common Lisp that uses Robert Strandh's Cleavir compiler, interoperates with C++ and uses LLVM as the backend. Clasp is the foundation of Cando - a programming environment for the development of molecular devices ( [this video] ). Robert Strandh is an exceptionally clear thinker and a fantastic programmer. I can't count the times that Robert has implemented changes to the Cleavir compiler source code and without him being able to test it (long story) passed it to me and it ran flawlessly in Clasp. I implemented his fast generic function solution within Clasp based on another of his papers ( [link] ). Edit: Basically - if Robert writes it up in a paper - I want to have the implementation. Once we develop molecular robots - they are going to implement LispOS. :-)