List of C Compilers (As early as 1973 and with the latest one at 2017)

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There are over 50 compilers for C like ICC by Intel to GNU GCC by GNU Project. The focus of having multiple compilers is to optimize the compiled C code for specific hardware and software environments. This has lead to a vast number of compilers but some have been abandoned in the path.

Some compilers were developed in 1970s (PCCM by Bell Labs) while the recent ones are from 2017 (AOCC by AMD).

Some compilers like LabWindows are used by a specific and small group of developers. At the same time, there are compilers like GNU GCC and ICC that are widely used till date.

Following is the ultimate list of C compilers that found some users:

Compiler	Release	Developer	In Wide Use	Users
pccm	1973	Bell Labs	No	General
BSD C	1979	Zolman	No	BSD Unix
Aztec C	1980	Manx Software Systems	No	DOS
ACK	1980	Tanenbaum, Jacobs	Yes	NetBSD
Lattice C	1982	Steve Krueger	No	DOS
MPW	1986	Apple	No	Early Mac
GCC	1987	GNU Project	Yes	General
Turbo C	1987	Turbo	No	Turbo IDE
Megamax C	1988	Megamax, Inc	No	Atari + Mac
Acorn C	1988	Acorn	Yes	RISC OS
LabWindows	1989	National Instruments	Yes	NIC
QuickC	1990	Microsoft	No	DOS
Oracle C	1991	Oracle	Yes	Oracle Developer Studio
MinGW	1993	Peters	Yes	Windows
MSVC	1993	Microsoft	Yes	Visual IDE
CodeWarrior	1993	Metrowerks	No	Motorola 68K
LCC	1994	Dave Hanson, Chris Fraser	No	MathWorks
cc65	1999	Bassewitz	Yes	Old 6502 systems
Open64	2002	Open64 dev	Yes	Itanium, x86-64
ICC	2003	Intel	Yes	Intel Systems
Watcom C	2003	Watcom	Yes	General + Novell
PathScale	2003	PathScale	No	MIPS
FPGA C	2005	Bass	Yes	FPGA
TCC	2005	Fabrice Bellard	Yes	Various libraries
CLang	2007	LLVM Developers	Yes	General
XL C	2007	IBM	No	IBM systems
HP-C	2012	HP	No	HP systems
AOCC	2017	AMD	Yes	AMD systems

Beyond this, there are several other compilers that were not used by a significant number of users and originated from several sources like:

• University research projects
• Backed by companies but failed to get users
• Experimental projects by a small group of developers

Why did some compilers go out of use?

One notable example is PCCM. It was widely used at a time as a general compiler but with the entry of better compilers like GCC, users moved from it.

Sometimes, backing companies are dissolved which results in downfall of the compilers like PathScale. Another example is CodeWarrior compiler which was mainly for Motorolla devices and due to its closure, this compiler went out of use.

For some the focus area went out of use. QuickC by Microsoft was for DOS and as Microsoft went on to develop better Operating System, they abandoned QuickC and developed better compilers for the new Operating Systems.

Why we need multiple compilers?

We need multiple compilers because:

• Instruction set that is optimized for a particular hardware systerm varies.
• Operating systems plays to significant role in execution.

Hence, a compiler can be optimized for:

• a particular Hardware system
• a particular Operating System
• Particular system load like distributed, real time and others.

For example: ICC by Intel is optimized for Intel Systems while AOCC is optimized for AMD systems. Other compilers like GCC focuses on general optimizations for hardware features which are fairly standard.

ACK compiler which came out in 1980 was optimised for OpenBSD operating system. Similarly, other compilers focus on different operating systems.

With this, you have a good idea of how compilers evolved over the years and how the focus of each compiler differ.