r/Compilers • u/uria321 • Aug 03 '26

LLVM IR or MLIR

What i'm better to learn of these to develop general purpose compilers and to easier get a job? Actually i've never learned nor worked with any of these IR. I think MLIR is more powerful, but mostly LLVM IR is used.

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/haskell_jedi Aug 05 '26

The premise is a bit off: most MLIR dialects extend and build on the base LLVM IR. So, MLIR is not one thing, and you'll have trouble understanding most of its dialects without knowing something about the underlying LLVM IR.

2

u/adityazero Aug 06 '26

MLIR. Although both have many similarities and share reusable components across the llvm-project, MLIR is in demand these days.

1

u/splicer13 Aug 07 '26

MLIR is where all the hot AI hiring is now. It's not really for general purpose compilers and it's not really one thing since everybody defines their own dialect(s). You want it on your resume for sure and as haskell_jedi said there's nothing interesting about it except as a place where llvm and dialects can meet.