Over the last few days I've been trying to get a libc library working for the TMS9900.

I started with libiberty, but got stuck trying to compile regexp.c. There were a lot of missing header files, and I wasn't able to find functional replacements. I gave up on it because even if I got past regexp, there were a lot of OS-related functions which would need to be removed. These are functions like file IO, syscalls, threading and timezones. Actually, after all that was removed, there wouldn't be much left.

So next I tried uclibc. This is a popular replacement for the standard glibc library, and is often used for embedded applications. There are a lot of configuration options, and many categories of functions can be simply disabled by using its configuration menu. This seemed like uclibc was perfect for our needs. I got as far as adding the TMS9900 as a valid target and running some test builds. Again I found problems. All of uclibc assumes 32-bit words. It also assumes that certain classes of algorithms will compile to small and fast code. Based of the strategies used, it seems to be aimed primarily at the ARM family of processors. I know from past experience that the ARM instruction set encourages heavy use of 32-bit shifts and integer operations, discourages branches and nearly all instructions execute at the same rate. Memory is plentiful and fast, so large lookup tables are encouraged. ARM instructions have three operands: two inputs and an output, so equvalent code  for the TMS9900 would, if nothing else, add a lot of MOV instructions. This model is a really bad match for the TMS9900, where all 32-bit operations are costly, shifts are slow, branches are fast, memory is tiny and slow, and there is a lot of variation in instruction speed. Ultimately, the resulting code would be huge and slow, even after the word size issues were resolved. I gave up and moved on.

After some research, I came across avr-libc. This is is a libcc replacement for the Atmel family of processors. These are low power 8 and 16 bit processors intended solely for embedded applications. They are most commonly found in Arduino development boards, and typically do not use an operating system. The instruction set is limited, and shares many aspects with the TMS9900. There is also a lot of documentation for the library and best practice guides. This seems encouraging.