COS 320: Compiling Techniques, Spring 2020

Course information

Semester: Spring 2020
Lectures: Tuesday & Thursday 1:30 - 2:50pm
Location: Friend 111
Instructor: Zak Kincaid, zkincaid@cs.princeton.edu.
Teaching assistants: Shaowei Zhu
Office hours:

Mon 4:30-6:30pm Friend 003 (Shaowei)
Wed 3-5pm CS 219 (Zak)

Links: Piazza, Real world OCaml, OCaml manual, OCaml standard library, OCaml style guide.

Description

Understand the design and construction of compilers. Concepts include syntax analysis, semantics, code generation, optimization and run-time systems. Translation of imperative languages (such as C), functional languages (such as ML), and object-oriented languages (such as Java) will be studied. Students will implement a complete compiler for a small language.

Many of the course materials and assignments have been adapted from Steve Zdancewic's CIS 341 at U Penn.

Schedule

This is a tentative schedule that may be changed during the course.
The (optional) readings are from Andrew W. Appel's Modern Compiler Implementation in ML.

Date	Topics	Readings
Feb 4	Introduction (OCaml slides)	Appel 1
Feb 6	X86lite	Appel 6
Feb 11	Intermediate representations I (example code)
Feb 13	Intermediate representations II (example code)	Appel 8
Feb 18	LLVM I
Feb 20	LLVM II
Feb 25	Lexing (example code)	Appel 2
Feb 27	Parsing I (example code)	Appel 3
Mar 3	Parsing II (web demo, example code)
Mar 5	Parsing III (web demo)
Mar 10	Midterm review
Mar 12	Midterm
Mar 17,19	Spring break
Mar 24	Types I (example code)
Mar 26	Types II
Mar 31	Types III
Apr 2	Data Flow Analysis & Optimization I	Appel 17
Apr 7	Data Flow Analysis & Optimization II (web demo)
Apr 9	Data Flow Analysis & Optimization III
Apr 14	Register Allocation	Appel 10
Apr 16	Control flow (web demo)
Apr 21	Loop Optimizations	Appel 18
Apr 23	High-level languages I (example code)	Appel 13,14,15
Apr 28	High-level languages II
Apr 30	Wrap-up

Assignments

To complete the assignments you will need an installation of OCaml and LLVM. Instructions for installing OCaml are available here. You can download pre-built binaries for LLVM 9.0.0 here; the binaries we will be using are clang and llc.

Assignment 1, released Feb 4, due Feb 18.
Assignment 2, released Feb 18, due Mar 3.
Assignment 3, released Mar 3, due Mar 31.
Assignment 4, released Mar 31, due Apr 21.
Assignment 5, released Apr 21, due May 12 (Dean's date).

Grading policies

There will be five assignments during the semester. You are encouraged to work in pairs. Projects that do not compile will receive no credit.

Your final grade will be weighted as follows:

Component	Weight
Assignment 1	10%
Assignment 2	12%
Assignment 3	13%
Assignment 4	13%
Assignment 5	12%
Midterm Exam	20%
Final Exam	20%

Late policy

Late assignments will be penalized 1% per hour past the deadline.
You have five "late passes", which allow you to submit an assignment up to 24 hours late without penalty. You may use up to three late passes on a single assignment. You do not need to inform anyone about your intention to use a late pass -- your late penalties will be tabulated a the end of the semester to maximize your final grade.
No additional lateness penalties will be waived without the recommendation of a Dean or a letter from McCosh Health Center. In this case, write to me.

Conduct

For homework and assignments, discussions with others are permitted, where the goal is to aid your understanding. However, the submitted work/code should be entirely your own (and your partner, should you work in a pair).
Do not copy another person's program, or get solutions from resources outside the course.
If you have any questions or concerns, please discuss these policies with the instructors.
Conduct during exams is covered by the University Honor Code.