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

anthropic.com

331–340 of 787 posts

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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is firmly where I am. "The wonder is not how well the dog dances, it is that it dances at all."

"It's like if a squirrel started playing chess and instead of "holy shit this squirrel can play chess!" most people responded with "But his elo rating sucks""

But the Squirrel is only playing chess because someone stuffed the pieces with food and it has learned that the only way to release it is by moving them around in some weird patterns.

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

#332

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…

> Still a really cool project!

Yeah. This test sorta definitely proves that AI is legit. Despite the millions of people still insisting it's a hoax.

The fact that the optimizations aren't as good as the 40 year gcc project? Eh - I think people who focus on that are probably still in some serious denial.

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

#333
Clicked on the first thing I happen to be interested in - SIMD stuff - and ended up at https://github.com/anthropics/claudes-c-compiler/blob/6f1b99..., which is a fast path incompatible with the _mm_free implementation; pretty trivial bug, not even actually SIMD or anything specialized at all.

A whole lot of UB in the actual SIMD impls (who'd have expected), but that can actually be fine here if the compiler is made to not take advantage of the UB. And then there's the super-weird mix of manual loops vs inline assembly vs builtins.

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

#334

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…

Also: a large amount of folks seem to think Claude code is losing a ton of money. I have no idea where the final numbers land, however, if the $20,000 figure is accurate and based on some of the estimates I've seen, they could've hired 8 senior level developers at a quarter million a year for the same amount of money spent internally. Granted, marketing sucks up far too much money for any startup, and again, we don't…

Even if the dollar cost for product created was the same, the flexibility of being able to spin a team up and down with an API call is a major advantage. That AI can write working code at all is still amazing to me.

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

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people care more about compile times than the performance of generated code. Perhaps even the correctness of generated code. Perhaps more so than determinism of the generated code. Different people in different contexts can have different priorities. Trying to make everyone happy can sometimes lead to making no one happy. Thus dichotomies like `-O2` vs `-Os`. EDIT (since HN is preventing me from responding): > S…

a compiler introducing bugs into code it compiles is a nightmare thankfully few have faced. The only thing worse would be a CPU bug like the legendary Pentium bug. Imagine you compile something like Postgres only to have it crash in some unpredictable way. How long do you stare at Postgres source before suspecting the compiler? What if this compiler was used to compile code in software running all over cloud stacks?…

> a compiler introducing bugs into code it compiles is a nightmare thankfully few have faced

Is this true? It’s not an everyday thing, but when using less common flags, or code structures, or targets… every few years I run into a codegen issue. It’s hard to imagine going through a career without a handful…

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

#336
post #332

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…

> Still a really cool project! Yeah. This test sorta definitely proves that AI is legit. Despite the millions of people still insisting it's a hoax. The fact that the optimizations aren't as good as the 40 year gcc project? Eh - I think people who focus on that are probably still in some serious denial.

It's amazing that it "works", but viability is another issue.

It cost $20,000 and it worked, but it's also totally possible to spend $20,000 and have Claude shit out a pile of nonsense. You won't know until you've finished spending the money whether it will fail or not. Anthropic doesn't sell a contract that says "We'll only bill you if it works" like you can get from a bunch of humans.

Do catastrophic bugs exist in that code? Who knows, it's 100,000 lines, it'll take a while to review.

On top of that, Anthropic is losing money on it.

All of those things combined, viability remains a serious question.

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

#337
post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still a really cool project! Yeah. This test sorta definitely proves that AI is legit. Despite the millions of people still insisting it's a hoax. The fact that the optimizations aren't as good as the 40 year gcc project? Eh - I think people who focus on that are probably still in some serious denial.

It's amazing that it "works", but viability is another issue. It cost $20,000 and it worked, but it's also totally possible to spend $20,000 and have Claude shit out a pile of nonsense. You won't know until you've finished spending the money whether it will fail or not. Anthropic doesn't sell a contract that says "We'll only bill you if it works" like you can get from a bunch of humans. Do catastrophic bugs exist in…

[deleted]

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

#338

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…

It’s cool but there’s a good chance it’s just copying someone else’s homework albeit in an elaborate round about way.

..A small thing, but it won't compile the RISCV version of hello.c if the source isn't installed on the machine it's running on.

It is standing on the shoulders of giants (all of the compilers of the past, built into it's training data... and the recent learnings about getting these agents to break up tasks) to get itself going. Still fairly impressive.

On a side-quest, I wonder where Anthropic is getting there power from. The whole energy debacle in the US at the moment probably means it made some CO2 in the process. Would be hard to avoid?

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

#339

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…

It’s cool but there’s a good chance it’s just copying someone else’s homework albeit in an elaborate round about way.

I see that as the point that all this is proving - most people, most of the time, are essentially reinventing the wheel at some scope and scale or another, so we’d all benefit from being able to find and copy each others’ homework more efficiently.

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

#340
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

Hot take: If you try to reimplement something in a clean room, its a step by step process, using your own accumulated knowledge as the basis. That knowledge that you hold in your brain, all too often is code that may have copyrights on it, from the companies you worked on. Is it any different for a LLM? The fact that the LLM is trained on more data, does not change that when you work for a company, leave it, take tha…

Clean-room design is extremely specific. Anyone who has so much as glanced at Windows source code[1] (or even ReactOS code![2]) is permanently banned from contributing to WINE.

This is 100% unambiguously not clean-room unless they can somehow prove it was never trained on any C compiler code (which they can't, because it most certainly was).

[1] https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Developer-FAQ#wh...

[2] https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Clean-Room-Guide...

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