What's a good paper (or book) reviewing current trends in compilers?
Check out the annual proceedings of conferences like POPL, PLDI, and CC.
Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?
61–70 of 98 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?
#62We're hiring compiler engineers at Horizon Quantum Computing ( http://horizonquantum.com ).
a bit off topic shot in the dark here, but no one seems to be able to tell me so far. what kind of machine code a quantum computer would execute. is it a instruction set like any computer or does it contain a lot of weirdness (instructions mapping to insane kind of micro-op sequences or something?) is there any information out on that topic at all? i am assuming it would still be mapping some electrical 1/0 kind of values to machine code up to higher level languages, but the concept just makes my brain fart a bit when i think about it. it would be super interesting to learn about or read up on
Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't pretend to have a total picture of all the possibilities, and there's quite a bit of not-always-explainable variation in what I do know, but I think it would be fair to say that people in this field are quite some way from going hungry. It tends to be better remunerated than a typical software gig but it's certainly possible to earn more in AI/ML. A lot also depends on whether you want to be a "normal" engine…
Do you mean that compiler engineers are getting paid shit nowadays?
No.
Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked as a compiler engineer at a big tech company in SV and lived very comfortably, was able to put a lot of money aside. The demand outstrips the supply, it's hard to hire qualified people, so the salaries have to be high to attract those qualified. Tangentially, I think the supply is small because compiler engineering is not a fashionable field of study. Everyone wants to do "AI" these days.
I hope am not being pushy but could you please say how much you made and in which company? Thanks
I'm not a compiler engineer, but I'm willing to venture that the lower bounds of a "competitive salary" for an engineer in silicon valley is somewhere between 200 & 250k. Compiler engineers may make much more, I don't know, but it's unlikely they make less than that. Perhaps that answers your question?
Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?
#65Not only is it still in demand, I think demand for compiler engineers is growing (and fast) due to the end of Moore’s law, since that means performance improvements are mainly (and soon only) happening due to improving software and making specialized hardware, and both of those involve heavy use of compilers and compiler writers.
JIT compiled scripting languages and DSLs (domain specific languages) are all over the place, GPUs and the APIs that run on GPSs all need special compilers, embedded processors and custom chips often need custom compilers and/or custom optimizations.
There’s certainly a ton of optimization work out there, so if you like designing optimizations on top of existing compilers, you can pretty much pick what kinds of API/software/hardware you want to work on.
Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope am not being pushy but could you please say how much you made and in which company? Thanks
I'm not a compiler engineer, but I'm willing to venture that the lower bounds of a "competitive salary" for an engineer in silicon valley is somewhere between 200 & 250k. Compiler engineers may make much more, I don't know, but it's unlikely they make less than that. Perhaps that answers your question?
> an engineer in silicon valley
Good point. The biggest factor that determines an engineer's salary is location, followed by years of experience. Not whether they work on compilers/embedded/web/whatever.
Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?
#67Apple has teams working on LLVM, Clang, and Swift. They have some open positions right now.
Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?
#68Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?
#69Compiler engineer...
It is very sad how the engineer term has been corrupted.
You are an engineer only if you pass the FE exam and are a registered member of the state association of engineers
Re: Ask HN: Are compiler engineers still in demand, and what do they work on?
#70We're hiring compiler engineers at Horizon Quantum Computing ( http://horizonquantum.com ).
a bit off topic shot in the dark here, but no one seems to be able to tell me so far. what kind of machine code a quantum computer would execute. is it a instruction set like any computer or does it contain a lot of weirdness (instructions mapping to insane kind of micro-op sequences or something?) is there any information out on that topic at all? i am assuming it would still be mapping some electrical 1/0 kind of v…
Quantum processors don't have the same gate sets as are used in conventional computers, since they can be in superpositions rather than in just the 0 and 1 state. Instead of NAND gates, a universal set of quantum gates will include a gate capable of producing quantum mechanical interference, such as a Hadamard gate. Almost all programming languages are currently at this gate level, often implemented through Python or another high-level language which you can use to build the circuit (e.g. IBM Qiskit, or Rigetti PyQuil). Our focus has been on building higher level languages to get to a point where the level of abstraction is such that the same code can be compiled for both conventional and quantum processors, which is not something that can be done with existing tools without resorting to the extremely inefficient direct simulation of quantum processors. The exact output we shoot for depends on the processor. For the Rigetti processors, for example, the native set of gates are limited to specific single qubit rotations and specific two-bit gates (CZ or parameterised XY gates). It is sufficient to construct a program using these gates, although we implement a transpiler to convert between any universal set of gates. For various reasons (usually to combat noise or increase performance of the processor) it is sometimes useful to be able to compile to lower level operations. In particular, for most quantum processors gate operations are implemented using laser/microwave/radiowave pulses, and so ultimately you aim to a sequence of such pulses. Being able to tweak the shape, phase, frequency and duration of such pulses is important for maximising the performance of the device. This is usually done to minimise error rates, but can also be done in an. attempt to realise faster logic gates etc.