Universal Intermediate Language ....

- it is next to impossible to design a single intermediate language to accommodate all programming languages

- Mythical universal intermediate language sought since mid 1950s (Aho, Sethi, Ullman)

. However, common IRs for similar languages, and similar machines have been designed, and are used for compiler development

Due to vast differences between programming languages and machine architectures, design of such a language is not possible. But, we group programming languages with similar characteristics together and design an intermediate language for them. Similarly an intermediate language is designed for similar machines. The number of compilers though doesn't decrease to M + N, but is significantly reduced by use of such group languages.