UnifiedIR for Julia

#1

Post by vimarsh6739 » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 9:28 PM UTC

Re: UnifiedIR for Julia

#2

Post by jarbus » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 4:16 PM UTC

I was unaware of alternative IRs for julia (albeit I started learning much more about compilers once I left the julia ecosystem). What other IRs is this supposed to replace? And why not just go with MLIR directly?

Re: UnifiedIR for Julia

#3

Post by zweifuss » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 4:22 PM UTC

So, does this mean faster rendering in notebooks, better debugging, fewer NVIDIA troubles?

Re: UnifiedIR for Julia

#4

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 4:23 PM UTC

jarbus wrote: post #2

I was unaware of alternative IRs for julia (albeit I started learning much more about compilers once I left the julia ecosystem). What other IRs is this supposed to replace? And why not just go with MLIR directly?

[deleted]

Re: UnifiedIR for Julia

#5

Post by KenoFischer » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

Uh, hi guys. This is my PR, but you should probably know that this is an AI generated prototype based on some of my design documents, but nowhere near ready for prime time. I do want to do something like this, but whether it'll take this shape or another is still up in the air.

Re: UnifiedIR for Julia

#6

Post by KenoFischer » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

jarbus wrote: post #2

I was unaware of alternative IRs for julia (albeit I started learning much more about compilers once I left the julia ecosystem). What other IRs is this supposed to replace? And why not just go with MLIR directly?

MLIR pulls in a lot of interface complexity that we don't want or need for pure-julia end-users. That said, it is obviously and deliberately close to MLIR as a representation since people do want to be able to interface with MLIR (e.g. in Enzyme), so I'd like to facilitate easy conversion back and forth.

Re: UnifiedIR for Julia

#7

Post by KenoFischer » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

zweifuss wrote: post #3

So, does this mean faster rendering in notebooks, better debugging, fewer NVIDIA troubles?

Probably not. It's mostly about making it less of a pain for downstream packages that need to do compiler-y things.

Re: UnifiedIR for Julia

#8

Post by mccoyb » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

KenoFischer wrote: post #5

Uh, hi guys. This is my PR, but you should probably know that this is an AI generated prototype based on some of my design documents, but nowhere near ready for prime time. I do want to do something like this, but whether it'll take this shape or another is still up in the air.

Very cool work Keno! Any place to find information about the Julia-specific concepts / features compared to MLIR?

Wondering if there are modeling or analysis modalities that don’t fit cleanly into MLIR concepts (understand that abstract interpretation on the IR comes with a unique set of concerns)

Re: UnifiedIR for Julia

#9

Post by slwvx » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

I guess "IR" is "intermediate representation" while "MLIR" [1] ("Multi-Level Intermediate Representation") is an IR from Chris Lattner/LLVM that is designed to be modular and extensible. For the uninitiated, I think [2] shows how the current Julia IR is generated and used in the Julia JIT compilation process

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLIR_(software)

[2] https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/devdocs/jit/

Re: UnifiedIR for Julia

#10

Post by markkitti » Sun, Jul 19, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

zweifuss wrote: post #3

So, does this mean faster rendering in notebooks, better debugging, fewer NVIDIA troubles?

Probably not directly but eventually I could see it having some benefits for what you listed.