CS577 Modern Language Processors Spring 2011

Instructor: Andrew Tolmach

Course Information

• Syllabus (pdf) (schedule revised Apr 26)
• Class mailing list

Project/Paper Guidelines

• About the project

Schedule and Assignments

• March 28: Introduction (rough lecture notes)
• March 30 & Apr 4: Compiler and Interpreter Architecture; the Java Virtual Machine (pdf slides) (pdf slides 4-up)
  • Reading
    • Nothing required, but you'll need to refer to Tim Lindholm & Frank Yellin, The Java Virtual Machine Specification, 2nd ed.
  • Homework 1 (due Apr 4)
    • individual support files
    • zipped support files
    • solution: interp1.c
    • interpreter with type stack: interp1_t.c
    • sketch of dynamic language interpreter with tags
• Apr 6 & 11: Compilation challenges for Modern Languages
  • Rough notes: outline objects exceptions
  • Reading
    • Alpern,Cocchi,Fink,Grove, Efficient implementation of Java interfaces: Invokeinterface considered harmless, OOPSLA 2001.
    • Kennedy and Syme, Design and Implementation of Generics for the .NET Common Language Runtime, PLDI 2001. (3/30/11: new link to good copy; copy at original link was missing a page!)
    • Peter Michaux, Scheme from Scratch. This is a linked sequence of blog posts with associated code. Be sure to read the entire sequence, and examine the code as you go. (Note that each post corresponds to a separate incremental improvement of the interpreter code.) Don't worry too much if you don't understand all the details of the Scheme language.
  • Homework 2 (due Apr 11)
• Apr 13 & 18: Compilation challenges from Hardware
  • Rough outline notes
  • Reading
    • Trishul Chilimbi, Mark Hill, and James Larus, Cache-Conscious Data Structures, IEEE Computer, Dec. 2000
    • Sarita Adve and Hans Boehm, Memory Models:A Case for Rethinking Parallel Languages and Hardware, CACM 53(8), August 2010
  • Homework 3 (due Apr 18)
• Apr 20 & 25: Efficient Interpretation (pdf slides) (pdf slides 4-up) and Quick Compilation (rough notes)
  • Reading
    • Berndl, Vitale, Zeleski, Brown, Context Threading: A flexible and efficient dispatch technique for virtual machine interpreters,CGO '05
    • Shi, Casey, Ertl, Gregg, Virtual Machine Showdown: Stack vs. Registers, ACM TACO, 4(4), January 2008
  • Homework 4 (due Apr 25)
  • Quick compilation implementation for SPARC
  • zipped files
• Apr 27: Basic Compiler Optimizations and SSA (pdf slides) (pdf slides 4-up)
  • No Reading or Homework; get a head start on your project
• May 2: Project sharing day
• May 4 & 9 : Dataflow Analysis; Memory Optimizations; Functional IRs (pdf slides)(pdf slides 4-up)
  • Reading
    • Wolfram Amme, et al., SafeTSA: A Type Safe and Referentially Secure Mobile-Code Representation Based on Static Single Assignment Form, PLDI 2001
    • Daniel Scales, et al., The Swift Java Compiler: Design and Implementation, Compaq WRL Research Report 2000/2
  • Homework 5 (due May 9)
• May 11 & 16 : Garbage Collection
  • Reading
    • Paul Wilson, Uniprocessor Garbage Collection Techniques, IWMM, 1992
    • Doligez and Gonthier, Portable, unobtrusive garbage collection for muliprocessors systems,POPL 94.
  • Homework 6 (due May 16)
• May 18 & 23 : Dynamic Languages
  • Reading
    • Gal, Eich, et al., Trace-based Just-in_Time Type Specialization for Dynamic Languages,PLDI 2009.
    • Richards, Lebresne, Burg, and Vitek, An Analysis of the Dynamic Behavior of JavaScript Programs, PLDI 2010.
    • Hoelzle, Chambers, Ungar, Debugging Optimized Code with Dynamic Deoptimization, PLDI 1992.
  • Homework 7 (due May 23)
• May 25 & June 1 : Safety and Verification
  • Reading
    • Morrisett, et al., TALx86: A Realistic Typed Assembly Language, 1999 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Compiler Support for System Software.
    • Leroy, Formal Verification of a Realistic Compiler, CACM 52(7), July 2009.
  • Homework 8 (due June 1)

JVM Reference

• Tim Lindholm & Frank Yellin, The Java Virtual Machine Specification, 2nd ed., happily available on-line

Java Implementations and Tools

• For some homeworks, you'll need javac to generate byte code and a JVM (java) to run the generated code for comparison with our interpreters. To make sure we all see consistent behavior, you must use Java1.6. A free implementation for linux or Windows is available here, and is pre-installed on MacOS (you may need to update to get 1.6). It is also available on all the CS dept. machines.
• Jikes is an alternative Java front-end from IBM that produces somewhat different byte-code than Sun's.
• Jasmin is stand-alone assembler for Java bytecodes; you may find it useful for constructing bytecode programs without writing Java sourcecode.

Other Useful Reading Material

• Books,etc.about Java
  • The official Java Language Specification, 3rd ed. is available on-line or can be purchased as a book.
  • Documentation for Sun's Java tools is here.
  • The standard Java library (API) is documented here.
  • Ken Arnold, James Gosling, and David Holmes,The Java Programming Language, 4th ed., Addison--Wesley, 2005. (earlier editions are also fine).
  • Bruce Eckel, Thinking in Java, 4th ed., Prentice-Hall, 2007. The 3rd edition of this book is available free on the web from here, but note that it only describes Java 1.4.
  • There are also many tutorials on the net, such as these.
• Books about Java Bytecode and .NET
  • Bill Venners, Inside the Java 2 Virtual Machine, McGraw-Hill, 1999. Substantial portions of this book are also available on-line. This is probably the best book to look at first.
  • Jon Meyer & Troy Downing,Java Virtual Machine, O'Reilly 1997. This is available from the PSU library as an ebook.
  • Joshua Engel,Progrmamming for the Java Virtual Machine, Addison-Wesley, 1999.
  • John Gough,Compiling for the .NET Common Language Runtime, Prentice Hall PTR, 2001.

• General Books on Compilers
  • Keith Cooper and Linda Torczon, Engineering a Compiler, Morgan Kaufmann, 2004.
  • Al Aho, Monica Lam, Ravi Sethi, and Jeff Ullman, Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools, 2nd ed. , Addison-Wesley, 2006.
  • Steve Muchnick, Advanced Compiler Design & Implmentation, Morgan Kaufmann, 1997.
  • Christopher Fraser and David Hanson,A Retargetable C Compiler: Design and Implementation, Benjamin/Cummings, 1995.
  • Andrew Appel, Modern Compiler Implementation in Java, 2nd ed., Cambridge UP, 2002. (Or earlier editions; be careful to check errata on author's web page.)
  • Randy Allen and Ken Kennedy,Optimizing Compilers for Modern Architectures, Morgan Kaufmann, 2002.
  • Robert Morgan,Building an Optimizing Compiler, Digital Press, 1998.

• Books on Garbage Collection
  • Richard Jones and Rafael Lins, Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management, Wiley, 1996.

• Books on Virtual Machines
• Jim Smith and Ravi Nair, Virtual Machines: Versatile Platforms for Systems and Processes, Morgan Kauffman, 2005.
• Iain D. Craig, Virtual Machines, Springer, 2005.

JVM Implementations with Source-Code

• Andrew's mini-JVM
• Open JDK
• Oracle's JDK6
• IBM Research's Jikes RVM
• SableVM from McGill Univ
• Kaffe
• Intel's Open Runtime Platform