Comment by giovannibonetti
9 hours ago
I wonder if nowadays we should be focusing less on scalar data structures and more on languages that facilitate vectorized/SIMD instructions. Languages like Vx lang, Mojo, and Futhark that work both in the CPU or the GPU, although each one works in a different level of abstraction and control.
GPU compilation is definitely something I intend Valen to support. I wrote about it back in 2022, [0] and I learned a lot of lessons on how to do it (and how not to do it!) from working on the Mojo compiler.
The biggest decision for Valen is what to lower to:
* Rust MIR, since rustc has CUDA now, [1] (perhaps other cards soon?)
* SPIR-V, like Zig does for its GPU compilation [2]
* MLIR
Rust MIR is looking pretty nice. Valen already has Rust interop by doing some rustc sorcery, [3] and it would be somewhat straightforward to switch from emitting LLVM to emitting Rust MIR. I just need to figure out if Rust MIR can support the optimizations I have planned for Valen.
In a perfect world, Rust would be able to lower its MIR to MLIR, since MLIR has so many backends. I recall there were some efforts to do that, unsure where that ended up.
[0] https://verdagon.dev/blog/next-gen-languages-gpu
[1] https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/introducing-cuda-rust-two-...
[2] https://ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#2026-06-26
[3] https://verdagon.dev/blog/golden-spike-reviving-vale-valen
You are in good company.
https://venge.net/graydon/talks/VectorizedInterpretersTalk-2...
I don’t want to hijack Evan’s post by posting a link, but if you’re interested I’ve implemented many of the ideas in that presentation in the language I’m working on. You can check out the latest link in my post history for a rundown of how it works and a demo.
is it the mech-lang?
Feel free to talk about it here, would love to hear about it!