CS6470: Advanced Compilers (Spring 2008)

• location: WEB 2470
• time: T,H 12:25 PM-01:45 PM
• instructor: John Regehr, regehr@cs.utah.edu
• John's office hours: after class or by appointment
• prerequisites: Students need to have taken an undergraduate compilers course or have equivalent knowledge. This should not be taken lightly as the lectures will not cover compiler front ends at all.
• class mailing list: cs6470@cs.utah.edu -- everyone enrolled in the class should subscribe to this list
• add/drop policy: the University is strict on this, see here for details and also keep the academic calendar in mind
• incomplete policy: I won't give one unless you have a documented legal or medical emergency

This course is primarily about static analysis: a collection of techniques for determining properties of programs, without running the programs. Optimizing compilers, parallelizing compilers, static bug-finding tools, and program verifiers all rely heavily on static analysis.

The first part of the course will cover core material such as dataflow frameworks, abstract interpretation, program representations, and pointer analysis. The second part of the course will focus on modern applications of static analysis.

Programming assignments will involve extending an existing static analyzer for C code.

The textbook is Principles of Program Analysis by Nielson, Nielson, and Hankin.