I learned quite recently that one of the limiting factors in the Rust compiler’s performance is the LLVM IR it produces being of poor quality. This means that LLVM itself takes much longer to produce code. Are there any initiatives to address this?

Yes, I guess?: Cranelift, which is a LLVM-like library written in Rust. This could be used for faster debug builds in the future. There's a Rust backend using Cranelift [2].

If you mean addressing the poor quality of LLVM IR directly, then I don't know.

[1]: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/blob/main/crane... [2]: https://github.com/bjorn3/rustc_codegen_cranelift