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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

#751

Post by rhubarbtree »

icedchai wrote: post #749
rhubarbtree wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really helpful, actually, as you may be able to give me some other ideas for projects. So, things you don't think I or my coursemates could do include writing a C compiler that builds a Linux kernel. What else do you think we couldn't do? I ask because there are various projects I'll probably get to at some point. Things on that list include (a) writing an OS microkernel and some of the other components of an…

Building a microkernel based OS feels feasible because it’s actually quite open ended. An “OS” could be anything from single user DOS to a full blown Unix implementation, with plenty in between. Amiga OS is basically a microkernel and that was built 40 years ago. There are also many other examples, like Minix. Do I think most people could build a full microkernel based mini Unix? No. But they could get “something” wo…

Minix is a fair example, or Herd. Something like that.

So what other projects are impossible? That was my question.

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

#752

Post by lufenialif2 »

potsandpans wrote: post #697
LinXitoW wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference, I use LLMs daily for coding. I do think they are useful. I am speaking about corporations and sales tactics, because this VERY experiment was done by exactly such a corporation. How about you think about how "this whole thing works", and apply it to their post? What did they not write? How many worse experiments did they not post about to not jeopardize investments? I don't find this impressive, becaus…

To be a bit pedantic, I'm not accusing you of being a Luddite. That would mean that you were fundamentally opposed to a new technology that's obviously more useful. Instead, in my opinion you are not giving enough grace to what is being demonstrated today. This is my analogy: you're seeing electrical demonstrations in front of your very eyes, but because the charlatans who are funding the research haven't quite figur…

Until the juice is worth the squeeze, the beeswax candles and gas lamps are likely more than fine.

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

#753

Post by chris_swenson »

jmalicki wrote: post #744
nicebyte wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

assembler is far from trivial at least for x86 where there are many possible encodings for a given instruction. emitting the most optimal encoding that does the correct thing depends on surrounding context, and you'd have to do multiple passes over the input.

What is a single example where the optimal encoding depends on context? (I am assuming you're just doing an assembler where registers have already been chosen, vs. a compiler that can choose sse vs. scalar and do register allocation etc.)?

“mov rcx, 0”. At least one assembler (the Go assembler) would at one point blindly (and arguably, incorrectly) rewrite this to “xor rcx, rcx”, which is smaller but modifies flags, which “mov” does not. I believe Go fixed this later, possibly by looking at surrounding instructions to see if the flags were being used, for instance by an “adc” later, to know if the assembler needs to pick the larger “mov” encoding.

Whether that logic should belong in a compiler or an assembler is a separate issue, but it definitely was in the assembler there.

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

#754

Post by direwolf20 »

jaccola wrote: post #584
direwolf20 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we've built a system where if you don't have a job, you die.

This is already hyperbolic; in most countries where software engineers or similar knowledge workers are widely employed there are welfare programmes. To add to that, if there is such mass unemployment in this scenario it will be because fewer people are needed to produce and therefore everything will become cheaper... This is the best kind of unemployment. So at best: none of us have to work again and will get everyt…

Most of those welfare programs aren't very good, and most of that is on purpose, to make people get jobs at whatever cost.

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

#755

Post by brookst »

EddieRingle wrote: post #508
brookst wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be insightful if the cost of inference weren’t declining at roughly 90% per year. Source: https://epoch.ai/data-insights/llm-inference-price-trends

According to that article, the data they analyzed was API prices from LLM providers, not their actual cost to perform the inference. From that perspective, it's entirely possible to make "the cost of inference" appear to decline by simply subsidizing it more. The authors even hint at the same possibility in the overview: > Note that while the data insight provides some commentary on what factors drive these price dro…

What in the world would the profit motive be to “make it appear” that inference cost is declining? Any investors would have access to the real data. End users don’t care. Why would you do the work for an elaborate deception?

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

#756

Post by dwaite »

qarl wrote: post #332
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…

> 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 is legit - with some pretty severe caveats. I am pressed to come up with an example that has more formal specification, published source implementations, and public unit test coverage than a C compiler.

It is not feasible that someone will use AI to tackle genuinely new software and provide a tenth of the level of guide-rails Anthropic had for this project. They were able to keep the million monkeys on their million typewriters on an extremely short leash, and able to have it do the vast majority of iteration without human intervention.

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

#757

Post by wqaatwt »

qarl wrote: post #332
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…

> 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.

The full source of several compilers being in its training set is somewhat helpful though. It’s not exactly a novel problem and those optimizations and edge cases which it seemingly is struggling are the overwhelming majority of the work anyway.

Do we know it just didn’t shuffle gcc’s source code around a bit?

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

#758

Post by rezonant »

qarl wrote: post #652
rezonant wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't stress enough how much LOC is not a measure of anything .

OK, well, the people in MY software industry use LOC as an informal measure of complexity. LIKE THE WHOLE WORLD DOES. But hey, maybe it's just the extremely high profile projects I've worked on.

Such as?

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

#760

Post by f1shy »

lelanthran wrote: post #559
qarl wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deal. I'll pay you IF you can achieve the same level of performance. Heck, I'll double it. You must provide the entire git history with small commits. I won't be holding my breath.

> Deal. I'll pay you IF you can achieve the same level of performance. Heck, I'll double it. > You must provide the entire git history with small commits. > I won't be holding my breath. Sure; I do this often (I operate as a company because I am a contractor) - money to be held in escrow, all the usual contracts, etc. It's a big risk for you , though - the level of performance isn't stated in the linked article so a…

And having TCC, GCC, CLANG and any other project lying around as cheat sheet, as the trained model, in some way, had.
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