CS577/677 Modern Language Processors Spring 2018

Instructor: Andrew Tolmach

Course Information

• Syllabus (pdf)
• Class mailing list

Project/Paper Guidelines

• About the project

Schedule and Assignments

• Apr 3: Introduction
• Apr 5 & 10: Compiler and Interpreter Architecture; the Java Virtual Machine (pdf slides)
  • Reading
    • Nothing required, but you'll need to refer to The Java Virtual Machine Specification, Java SE 8 ed.
  • Homework 1 (due Apr 10)
    • support files (updated Apr. 7 at 9pm)
  • Comparing JVM with other virtual machines (rough notes)
    • Examples (zip file)
    • A tutorial on how to build a simple Python interpreter (in Python).
    • An introduction to the LLVM architecture.
• Apr 12 & 17: Compilation challenges for Modern Languages
  • Reading
    • Alpern,Cocchi,Fink,Grove, Efficient implementation of Java interfaces: Invokeinterface considered harmless, OOPSLA 2001. (N.B. This file, especially the legends on the graphs towards the end, may not view as intended in some pdf viewers. Try acrobat reader or your favorite printer.)
    • Kennedy and Syme, Design and Implementation of Generics for the .NET Common Language Runtime, PLDI 2001. (ACM Digital Library; free access from pdx.edu domain)
  • Homework 2 (due Apr 17)
• Apr 19 & 24: Compilation challenges from Hardware
  • Reading
    • Trishul Chilimbi, Mark Hill, and James Larus, Making pointer-based data structures cache conscious, IEEE Computer 33(12), Dec. 2000
    • Mytkowicz, Diwan, Hawwirth, Sweeney, Producing Wrong Data Without Doing Anything Obviously Wrong!, ASPLOS09
  • Homework 3 (due Apr 24)
• Apr 26 & May 1: Efficient Interpretation (pdf slides) and Quick Compilation (rough notes)
  • Reading
    • Shi, Casey, Ertl, Gregg, Virtual Machine Showdown: Stack vs. Registers, ACM TACO, 4(4), January 2008 (ACM Digital Library; free access from pdx.edu domain)
  • Homework 4 (due May 1)
• May 3 & 8: Basic Compiler Optimizations and SSA; Dataflow Analysis (pdf slides)
  • Reading
    • Daniel Scales, et al., The Swift Java Compiler: Design and Implementation, Compaq WRL Research Report 2000/2
    • Wolfram Amme, et al., SafeTSA: A Type Safe and Referentially Secure Mobile-Code Representation Based on Static Single Assignment Form, PLDI 2001 (ACM Digital library)
  • Homework 5 (due May 8)
• May 10 : Garbage Collection (pdf slides)
  • Reading
    • Paul Wilson, Uniprocessor Garbage Collection Techniques, IWMM, 1992
  • Homework 6. (due May 22 )
    • Supporting materials
    • optional reading: Henry Baker, List Processing in Real Time on a Serial Computer, CACM 21(4), April 1978. (ACM Digital library; free access from pdx.edu domain)
• May 24 & 29: Liveness Analysis (pdf slides); Memory-based optimizations (pdf slides) Rpython
  • Reading
    • Wurthinger, et al., Practical partial evaluation for high-performance dynamic language runtimes, PLDI 2017
    • Peterson, PyPy in The Architecture of Open Source Applications, v. 2
  • No homework, but please come prepared to discuss the reading.
• May 31 and June 5: Correctness and verification (pdf slides) (Coq document) (executable Coq script)
  • Reading
    • Leroy, Formal Verification of a Realistic Compiler, CACM 52(7), July 2009.
    • Yang, Chen, Eide, Regehr, Finding and Understanding Bugs in C compilers, PLDI 11.
  • No homework, but please come prepared to discuss the reading.

JVM Reference

• Tim Lindholm, Frank Yellin, Gilad Bracha, and Alex Buckley, The Java Virtual Machine Specification, Java SE 8 ed., happily available online.

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 should use Java 8. A free implementation of Java 8 for linux, MacOS, or Windows is available here. It is also available on the CS dept. linuxlab machines, by doing addpkg java8.
• Jikes is an alternative Java 1.4 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, Java SE8 edition.
  • 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. is available free on the web; it describes Java 5/6. A revision for Java 8 is available as an ebook only.
  • 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 (must be on the PSU network or VPN).
  • 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 2nd ed., Morgan Kaufmann, 2012. (First edition is almost identical.)
  • 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.
  • Torben Mogensen, Basics of Compiler Design, 2010. (Freely available on-line.)

• Books on Garbage Collection
  • Richard Jones, Antony Hosking, and Eliot Moss, The Garbage Collection Handbook, Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2011.
  • 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
• IBM Research's Jikes RVM (moribund project)
• SableVM from McGill Univ (dead project)
• Kaffe (dead project)
• Intel's Open Runtime Platform (dead project)