COMP 512: Advanced Compiler Construction
Professor Keith D. Cooper
Department of Computer Science
Rice University
Houston, Texas, USA
Spring 2015: Duncan Hall 1042, Tuedsay & Thursday, 10:50 AM
Course Syllabus


Announcements


Summary

COMP 512 examines a variety of topics that arise in the design and implementation of an optimizing compiler. It assumes the material covered in COMP 412 as background. It covers many topics and moves at a quick pace. This course does not cover automatic detection of parallelism; for that material, take COMP 515.

The course will rely on a large collection of technical papers. Most of the readings are available in digital form. The lectures page will include citations (with a doi if possible).

In addition to the papers, the course will rely on several chapters from Engineering a Compiler, 2nd Edition. Students who do not already have a copy of EaC2e should be able to use the copies on reserve for the class in Fondren Library.

Syllabus
The course syllabus provides current information on course policies and expectations.

Lectures
Lecture notes are posted online, typically before class. The lecture notes often have material beyond what is covered in the lecture.

Project
Project page: Over the course of the semester, students will implement a small optimizer for a subset of ILOC. Details and documentation are available on the project page.

Exams
The course will have a midterm and a final. The exams will be closed-notes, closed-book, take-home exams, of two to three hour duration.


For reference, the lectures page from the 2013 edition of COMP 512 is still available.
It will give you an idea of what to expect in the course.
It also provides bibligraphic references for specific topics.

This site is maintained by Keith D. Cooper.
He is a poor e-mail correspondent.