| PL.8 | |
|---|---|
| Designed by | IBM |
PL.8 is a dialect of PL/I (Programming Language One) developed by IBM Research in the 1970s by the compiler group, under Martin Hopkins, within a major research program that led to the IBM RISC architecture. [1] The ".8" in the name was intended to suggest it was about 80% of PL/I. [1] Written in PL/I and bootstrapped via the PL/I Optimizing compiler, it was an alternative to PL/S for system programming, compiling initially to an intermediate machine-independent language with symbolic registers and machine-like operations. [2] It applied machine-independent program optimization techniques to this intermediate language to produce exceptionally good object code. The intermediate language was mapped by the back-end to the target machine's register architecture and instruction set. Back-ends were written for IBM 801, S/370, Motorola 68000, [3] [4] and POWER/PowerPC.[ citation needed ]
A version was used on IBM mainframes as a development tool for software that was being designed for the IBM AS/400, as well as to write the "i370" internal code for the "Capitol" chipset used in the IBM 9377 processor and some ES/9370 models [5] [6] and the millicode for S/390 and z/Architecture processors. [7]