CS577 Compiler Construction (Modern Language Processors) Spring 2002

Course Information

Syllabus (postscript) (pdf)

New Schedule Information

Reminder: No class on Monday, May 27 (Memorial Day Holiday).
Homework 2 is due in class on Wednesday, May 29.
Projects will be due in the instructor's office or mailbox at noon on Friday, June 14.
The take-home final will be handed out on Wed. June 5 in class, and will be due at 12:30 pm on Wed. June 12 (the start of the final exam slot). The final may ask about anything covered in lecture or in the assigned papers.
Project presentations will be during class on June 5 and during the final exam slot on June 12. Presentations should aim to be about 20 minutes; if you think you'll need longer, consult with the instructor.

Benchmarks

The single most useful set of meaningful benchmarks available for free is from the Java Grande Forum. Users on the CS Solaris network can access the source and .class files in directory /u/apt/jgf/v2.0. These benchmarks are biased towards floating point array computations. I'd recommend running a combination of floating point and integer benchmarks, including some that create lots of objects, from sections 2 and 3. Good possibilities include raytracer, heapsort, and crypt. Note that some of the benchmarks run a long time, even in the smallest ("A") size; be kind to your fellow users if running these on a shared machine.

Homework

Homework 1 (due 4/17/02) (postscript) (pdf)

BCEL .jar file Documentation Source

example.java example.class

Homework 2 (due 5/29/02) (postscript) (pdf)

compile.java (REVISED ONCE MORE 3 June 12 noon. Fixes a minor bug in stack heights.)

Sample solution: compile1.java

BCEL .jar file Documentation Source

SPIM Simulator Homepage. The simulator is installed in the CS Solaris network in directory /u/apt/spim/bin.

Readings

Read for April 3:
- James Gosling, Oak Intermediate Bytecodes, ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Intermediate Representations, 1995.
- Lindholm & Yellin,The Java Virtual Machine Specification, 2nd ed., Chapter 2 (read lightly).
- If you are unfamiliar with Java, skim a good introductory textbook, such as Arnold, Gosling, and Holmes, The Java Programming Language, Addison-Wesley.
Read for April 10:
- Lindholm & Yellin,The Java Virtual Machine Specification, 2nd ed., Read Chapter 3 and skim Chapter 6.
Read for April 17:
- I Piumarta and F. Riccardi, Optimizing direct threaded code by selective inlining, PLDI 1998.
- Anton Ertl,Stack Caching for Interpreters, PLDI 1995. (This paper gets somewhat obscure, especially in Section 3. Try to get the basic ideas, even if you can't figure out all the details.)
Read for April 22:
- B. Alpern et al.,Efficient Implementation of Java Interfaces: Invokeinterface Considered Harmless, OOPLSA 2001.
Read for April 24:
- Paul Wilson,Uniprocessor Garbage Collection Techniques, IWMM, 1992.
Read for May 20:
- Daniel Scales, et al.,The Swift Java Compiler: Design and Implementation, Compaq WRL Research Report 2000/2.
Read for May 22:
- M. Poletto and V. Sarkar,Linear Scan Register Allocation, TOPLAS 21(5), 1999
- OR Omri Traub, Glenn Holloway, and Michael Smith, Quality and Speed in Linear-scan Register Allocatoin, PLDI 98.
Read for May 29:
- Xavier Leroy, Java bytecode verification: an overview, CAV2001 (LNCS 2102).
- Wolfram Amme, et al.,SafeTSA: A Type Safe and Referentially Secure Mobile-Code Representation Based on Static Single Assignment Form, PLDI 2001.
Read for June 3:
- Trishul Chilimbi, Mark Hill, and James Larus, Cache-Conscious Data Structures, IEEE Computer, Dec. 2000.

Lecture Materials

Apr. 1 Outline Notes Code examples
Apr. 3 Outline Notes
Apr. 8 Outline Notes
Apr. 10 Slides (4-up pdf)
Apr. 15 Slides
Apr. 17 Outline Notes and Slides
Apr. 22 Outline Notes and Slides
Apr. 24 Slides (4-up pdf)
Apr. 29 Slides (4-up pdf)
May 1 (continuation of above)
May 6 Outline Notes and Slides
May 8 Notes
May 13 Notes
May 15 Notes
May 20 Notes
May 22 Notes
May 29 Notes

Useful Resources

JVM Implementations with sourcecode
Books about Java Bytecode
- Tim Lindholm & Frank Yellin, The Java Virtual Machine Specification, 2nd ed., happily available on-line
- 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.
General Books on Compilers
- Al Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeff Ullman, Compilers: Principles, Tools, and Techniques, Addison-Wesley, 1986.
- Andrew Appel, Modern Compiler Implementation in ML/Java/C, Cambridge UP, 1998.
- Steve Muchnick, Advanced Compiler Design & Implmentation, Morgan Kaufmann, 1997.
- Christopher Fraser and David Hanson,A Retargetable C Compiler: Design and Implementation, Benjamin/Cummings, 1995.
Books on Garbage Collection
- Richard Jones and Rafael Lins, Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management, Wiley, 1996.