> But I'm also surprised any device manufacturer would think it's a better use of their time to ship a bespoke C compiler rather than an LLVM backend that would allow a lot more languages to be built against their ISA, making it more valuable.

They aren't usually building a compiler from scratch; they modify their existing compiler[1] for their new hardware, which is fractions of effort required compared to building a new compiler or modifying the LLVM backend.

Unless it's a completely new ISA, they'll spend an hour or less just adding in the new emit code for only the changes in the ISA.

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[1] Usually just the previous gcc that they used, which is why in 2022 I was working on brand new devices that came with a customised gcc 4.something