Fast, highly sophisticated code analysis and code transformation tools are essential for modern software development.
Before releasing its mobile apps, Facebook submits them to a tool called Infer that finds bugs by static analysis, i.e., without even having to run the code, and guides developers in fixing them.
Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox analyze and optimize JavaScript code to make browsers acceptably responsive.
Performance-critical systems and application software would be impossible to build and evolve without compilers that derive highly optimized machine code from high-level source code that humans can understand.
Understanding what modern code analysis and transformation techniques can and can't do is a prerequisite for research on both software engineering and computer architecture since hardware relies on software to realize its potential.
In this class, you will learn the fundamentals of code analysis and transformation, and you will apply them by extending LLVM, a compiler framework now in production use by Apple, Adobe, Intel and other industrial and academic enterprises.
Syllabus
Department page
This class takes materials from three different books (listed in the syllabus) as well as a few research papers.
The result is a set of slides, notes, and code.
Some lectures rely on code and notes (not slides).
You can download the template to use for your LLVM middle-end passes here.
All the slides used in the 2022-2023 class are below.
The rest of the material is available only on Canvas.
Materials are improved every year.
They are updated on this website (atomically) only at the end of the class.
| Week number | First lecture | Second lecture |
|---|---|---|
| Week 0 | Welcome | Introduction to LLVM |
| Week 1 | Data Flow Analysis | |
| Week 2 | Static Single Assignment form | LLVM hacking |
| Week 3 | Data Flow Analysis and their uses | Foundations of Data Flow Analysis |
| Week 4 | Control Flow Analysis | Dependences |
| Week 5 | Memory alias analysis | |
| Week 6 | Inter-procedural CAT | |
| Week 7 | Inter-procedural analysis example: VLLPA | Loops |
| Week 8 | Loops | |
| Week 9 | Loop transformations, State-of-the-art CAT | Competition |
Students extend the industrial-strength compiler clang using their own advanced code analyses and transformations developed during this class. At the end of the class, the resulting compilers compete and the names of the students that designed and built the best compilers are reported below.
| Year | Name | Picture |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 - 2023 | Riley "a11ce" Boksenbaum |
|
| 2021 - 2022 | Peter Zhong, Maxwell Paik |
|
| 2020 - 2021 | Aaron Nelson |
|
| 2019 - 2020 | Gaurav Chaudhary |
|
| 2018 - 2019 | Vijay Kandiah |
|
| 2017 - 2018 | Angelo Matni |
|
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