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

anthropic.com

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

#421

Post by qarl »

bdangubic wrote: post #348
PostOnce wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> On top of that, Anthropic is losing money on it This has got to be my favorite one of them all that keeps coming up in too many comments… You know who also was losing money in the beginning?! every successful company that ever existed! some like Uber were losing billions for a decade. and when was the last time you rode in a taxi? (I still do, my kid never will). not sure how old you are and if you remember “facebo…

I love how your comment is getting downvoted.

Like it's a surprise that startups burn through money. I get the feeling that people really have no idea what they're talking about in here anymore.

It's a shame.

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

#422

Post by TheCondor »

shakna wrote: post #200
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…

> Opus was unable to implement a 16-bit x86 code generator needed to boot into 16-bit real mode. While the compiler can output correct 16-bit x86 via the 66/67 opcode prefixes, the resulting compiled output is over 60kb, far exceeding the 32k code limit enforced by Linux. Instead, Claude simply cheats here and calls out to GCC for this phase Does it really boot...?

The assembler seems like nearly the easiest part. Slurp arch manuals and knock it out, it’s fixed and complete.

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

#423

Post by tantalor »

andrewshawcare wrote: post #397

It used the best tests it could find for existing compilers. This is effectively steering Claude to a well-defined solution. Hard to find fully specified problems like this in the wild. I think this is more a testament to small, well-written tests than it is agent teams. I imagine you could do the same thing with any frontier model and a single agent in a linear flow. I don’t know why people use parallel agents and i…

Why didn't Claude realize on its own that it needed a continuous integration pipeline?

Far to much human intervention here.

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

#424

Post by hirvi74 »

bearjaws wrote: post #367
nomel wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would claim that LLMs desperately need proprietary code in their training, before we see any big gains in quality. There's some incredible source available code out there. Statistically, I think there's a LOT more not so great source available code out there, because the majority of output of seasoned/high skill developers is proprietary. To me, a surprising portion of Claude 4.5 output definitely looks like studen…

I will say many closed source repos are probably equally as poor as open source ones. Even worse in many cases because they are so over engineered nobody understands how they work.

I firmly agree with your first sentence. I can just think about the various modders that have created patches and performance enhancing mods for games with budgets of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.

But to give other devs and myself some grace, I do believe plenty of bad code can likely be explained by bad deadlines. After all, what's the Russian idiom? "There is nothing more permanent than the temporary."

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

#425

Post by elevation »

dcre wrote: post #412
nomel wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would claim that LLMs desperately need proprietary code in their training, before we see any big gains in quality. There's some incredible source available code out there. Statistically, I think there's a LOT more not so great source available code out there, because the majority of output of seasoned/high skill developers is proprietary. To me, a surprising portion of Claude 4.5 output definitely looks like studen…

This is dead wrong: essentially the entirety of the huge gains in coding performance in the past year have come from RL, not from new sources of training data. I echo the other commenters that proprietary code isn’t any better, plus it doesn’t matter because when you use LLMs to work on proprietary code, it has the code right there.

> it doesn’t matter because when you use LLMs to work on proprietary code, it has the code right there

The quality of the existing code base makes a huge difference. On a recent greenfield effort, Claude emitted an MVP that matched the design semantics, but the code was not up to standards. For example, it repeatedly loaded a large file into memory in different areas where it was needed (rather than loading once and passing a reference.)

However, after an early refactor, the subsequently generated code vastly improved. It honors the testing and performance paradigms, and it's so clean there's nothing for the linter to do.

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

#426

Post by nozzlegear »

famouswaffles wrote: post #387
nozzlegear wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cool I guess. Kind of a meaningless statement yeah? Let's hit the bend, then we'll talk. Until then repeating, 'It's an S Curve guys and what's more, we're near the bend! trust me" ad infinitum is pointless. It's not some wise revelation lol.

> Kind of a meaningless statement yeah?

If you say so. It's clear you think these marketing announcements are still "exponential improvements" for some reason, but hey, I'm not an AI hype beast so by all means keep exponentialing lol

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

#427

Post by silver_sun »

MaskRay wrote: post #366
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…

I want to verify the claim that it builds the Linux kernel. It quickly runs into errors, but yeah, still pretty cool! make O=/tmp/linux/x86 ARCH=x86_64 CC=/tmp/p/claudes-c-compiler/target/release/ccc -j30 defconfig all ``` /home/ray/Dev/linux/arch/x86/include/asm/preempt.h:44:184: error: expected ';' after expression before 'pto_tmp__' do { u32 pto_val__ = ((u32)(((unsigned long) ~0x80000000) & 0xffffffff)); if (0) {…

They said it builds Linux 6.9, maybe you are trying to compile a newer version there?

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

#428

Post by hirvi74 »

typ wrote: post #364
nomel wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would claim that LLMs desperately need proprietary code in their training, before we see any big gains in quality. There's some incredible source available code out there. Statistically, I think there's a LOT more not so great source available code out there, because the majority of output of seasoned/high skill developers is proprietary. To me, a surprising portion of Claude 4.5 output definitely looks like studen…

I'd bet, on average, the quality of proprietary code is worse than open-source code. There have been decades of accumulated slop generated by human agents with wildly varied skill levels, all vibe-coded by ruthless, incompetent corporate bosses.

In my time, I have potentially written code that some legal jurisdictions might classify as a "crime against humanity" due to the quality.

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

#429

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

bdangubic wrote: post #348
PostOnce wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> On top of that, Anthropic is losing money on it This has got to be my favorite one of them all that keeps coming up in too many comments… You know who also was losing money in the beginning?! every successful company that ever existed! some like Uber were losing billions for a decade. and when was the last time you rode in a taxi? (I still do, my kid never will). not sure how old you are and if you remember “facebo…

Anyone remember the dotcom bust?
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