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We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

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Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#221

Post by beambot »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #165

I spent a good part of my career (nearly a decade) at Google working on getting Clang to build the linux kernel. https://clangbuiltlinux.github.io/ This LLM did it in (checks notes): > Over nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions and $20,000 in API costs It may build, but does it boot (was also a significant and distinct next milestone)? (Also, will it blend?). Looks like yes! > The 100,000-line compiler can build a bootab…

This is getting close to a Ken Thompson "Trusting Trust" era -- AI could soon embed itself into the compilers themselves.

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#222

Post by [deleted] »

raincole wrote: post #161
geraneum wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was a clean-room implementation This is really pushing it, considering it’s trained on… internet, with all available c compilers. The work is already impressive enough, no need for such misleading statements.

It's not a clean-room implementation, but not because it's trained on the internet. It's not a clean-room implementation because of this: > The fix was to use GCC as an online known-good compiler oracle to compare against

[deleted]

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#223

Post by cermicelli »

cheema33 wrote: post #210
Havoc wrote: post #121

Cool project, but they really could have skipped the mention of clean room. Something trained on every copyrighted thing known to mankind is the opposite of clean room

As others have pointed out, humans train on existing codebases as well. And then use that knowledge to build clean room implementations.

If that's what clean room means to you, I do know AI can definitely replace you. As even ChatGPT is better than that.

(prompt: what does a clean room implementation mean?)

From ChatGPT without login BTW!

> A clean room implementation is a way of building something (usually software) without copying or being influenced by the original implementation, so you avoid copyright or IP issues.

> The core idea is separation.

> Here’s how it usually works:

> The basic setup

> Two teams (or two roles):

> Specification team (the “dirty room”)

> Looks at the original product, code, or behavior

> Documents what it does, not how it does it

> Produces specs, interfaces, test cases, and behavior descriptions

> Implementation team (the “clean room”)

> Never sees the original code

> Only reads the specs

> Writes a brand-new implementation from scratch

> Because the clean team never touches the original code, their work is considered independently created, even if the behavior matches.

> Why people do this

> Reverse-engineering legally

> Avoid copyright infringement

> Reimplement proprietary systems

> Create open-source replacements

> Build compatible software (file formats, APIs, protocols)

I really am starting to think we have achieved AGI. > Average (G)Human Intelligence

LMAO

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#224

Post by hmry »

If I, a human, read the source code of $THING and then later implement my own version, that's not a "clean-room" re-implementation. The whole point of "clean-room" is that no single person has access to both the original code and the new code. (That way, you can legally prove that no copyright infringement took place.)

But when an AI does it, now it counts? Opus is trained on the source code of Clang, GCC, TCC, etc. So this is not "clean-room".

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#225

Post by ndesaulniers »

zaphirplane wrote: post #204
ndesaulniers wrote: post #165

I spent a good part of my career (nearly a decade) at Google working on getting Clang to build the linux kernel. https://clangbuiltlinux.github.io/ This LLM did it in (checks notes): > Over nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions and $20,000 in API costs It may build, but does it boot (was also a significant and distinct next milestone)? (Also, will it blend?). Looks like yes! > The 100,000-line compiler can build a bootab…

What were the challenges out of interest. Some of it is the use of gcc extensions? Which needed an equivalent and porting over to the equivalent

`asm goto` was the big one. The x86_64 maintainers broke the clang builds very intentionally just after we had gotten x86_64 building (with necessary patches upstreamed) by requiring compiler support for that GNU C extension. This was right around the time of meltdown+spectre, and the x86_64 maintainers didn't want to support fallbacks for older versions of GCC (and ToT Clang at the time) that lacked `asm goto` support for the initial fixes shipped under duress (embargo). `asm goto` requires plumbing throughout the compiler, and I've learned more about register allocation than I particularly care...

Fixing some UB in the kernel sources, lots of plumbing to the build system (particularly making it more hermetic).

Getting the rest of the LLVM binutils substitutes to work in place of GNU binutils was also challenging. Rewriting a fair amount of 32b ARM assembler to be "unified syntax" in the kernel. Linker bugs are hard to debug. Kernel boot failures are hard to debug (thank god for QEMU+gdb protocol). Lots of people worked on many different parts here, not just me.

Evangelism and convincing upstream kernel developers why clang support was worth anyones while.

https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/issues for a good historical perspective. https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/wiki/Talks,-Present... for talks on the subject. Keynoting LLVM conf was a personal highlight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l4DtR5exwo).

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#226

Post by fmbb »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #142
nozzlegear wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every S-curve looks like an exponential until you hit the bend.

We've been hearing this for 3 years now. And especially 25 was full of "they've hit a wall, no more data, running out of data, plateau this, saturated that". And yet, here we are. Models keep on getting better, at more broad tasks, and more useful by the month.

> And yet, here we are.

I dunno. To me it doesn’t even look exponential any more. We are at most on the straight part of the incline.

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#227

Post by chasd00 »

gignico wrote: post #3

> To stress test it, I tasked 16 agents with writing a Rust-based C compiler, from scratch, capable of compiling the Linux kernel. Over nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions and $20,000 in API costs, the agent team produced a 100,000-line compiler that can build Linux 6.9 on x86, ARM, and RISC-V. If you don't care about code quality, maintainability, readability, conformance to the specification, and performance of the c…

> If you don't care about code quality, maintainability, readability, conformance to the specification, and performance of the compiler and of the compiled code, please, give me your $20,000, I'll give you your C compiler written from scratch :)

i don't know if you could. Let's say you get a check for $20k, how long will it take you to make an equivalent performing and compliant compiler? Are you going to put your life on pause until it's done for $20k? Who's going to pay your bills when the $20k is gone after 3 months?

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#228

Post by bopbopbop7 »

beambot wrote: post #221
ndesaulniers wrote: post #165

I spent a good part of my career (nearly a decade) at Google working on getting Clang to build the linux kernel. https://clangbuiltlinux.github.io/ This LLM did it in (checks notes): > Over nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions and $20,000 in API costs It may build, but does it boot (was also a significant and distinct next milestone)? (Also, will it blend?). Looks like yes! > The 100,000-line compiler can build a bootab…

This is getting close to a Ken Thompson "Trusting Trust" era -- AI could soon embed itself into the compilers themselves.

A pay to use non-deterministic compiler. Sounds amazing, you should start.

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#229

Post by storus »

Now this is fairly "easy" as there are multitude of implementations/specs all over the Internet. How about trying to design a new language that is unquestionably better/safer/faster for low-level system programming than C/Rust/Zig? ML is great in aping existing stuff but how about pushing it to invent something valuable instead?

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#230

Post by bmandale »

hmry wrote: post #224

If I, a human, read the source code of $THING and then later implement my own version, that's not a "clean-room" re-implementation. The whole point of "clean-room" is that no single person has access to both the original code and the new code. (That way, you can legally prove that no copyright infringement took place.) But when an AI does it, now it counts? Opus is trained on the source code of Clang, GCC, TCC, etc.…

That's not the only way to protect yourself from accusations of copyright infringement. I remember reading that the GNU utils were designed to be as performant as possible in order to force themselves to structure the code differently from the unix originals.
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