2016 European LLVM Developers' Meeting

While computer architecture and hardware optimization is generally well covered in education, compilers are still often a poorly represented subject. Classical compiler lecture series seem to mostly cover the front-end parts of the compiler but usually lack an in-depth discussion of newer optimization and code generation techniques. Important aspects such as auto-vectorization, complex instruction support for DSP architectures, and instruction scheduling for highly parallel for VLIW architectures are often touched only lightly. However, creating new processor designs requires a properly optimizing compiler in order for it to be usable by your customers. As such, there is a good market for well-trained compiler engineers which does not match with the classical style of teaching compilers in education.

At Eindhoven University of Technology, we are currently starting a new compiler course that should provide such an improved lecture series to our students and we plan to make this available to the wider community. The focus of this lecture series is on tool-flow organization of modern parallelizing compilers, their internal techniques, and the advantages and limitations of these techniques. We try to train the students so that they can understand how the compiler works internally, but also apply this new knowledge in writing C program code that allows the compiler to utilize its advanced optimizations to generate better and portable code. As a result, we hope to provide better qualified compiler engineers, but also train them to write better high-performance code at a high-level by applying their compiler knowledge in guiding the compiler to an efficient implementation of the program.

As part this process we would like to get in contact with institutes and companies that will be taking advantage of our newly educated students and discuss with them the contents of our lecture series. What do you guys think are important topics that new engineers should know about to be useful in your organization and what would make this course interesting for yourself?

Notes: https://etherpad.net/p/lcigxThV54