CS 6120: Advanced Compilers: The Self-Guided Online Course (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: CS 6120: Advanced Compilers: The Self-Guided Online Course (2020)

#61

Post by chkmr » Fri, Jun 19, 2026, 5:56 PM UTC

j2kun wrote: post #22

vkazanov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is advanced then? Good coverage of dce, data flow, ssa, intruction selection and reg alloc is actually like 98% of the backend.

Perhaps polyhedral optimization, tiling, scalar evolution, vectorization... I guess garbage collection is pretty advanced in the syllabus.

Some of these have been covered in student projects in this course. E.g. https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs6120/2023fa/blog/polyhe...

So, if you include the readings (proper research papers) and the course project, I'd say this course earns the "advanced" in its name.

Re: CS 6120: Advanced Compilers: The Self-Guided Online Course (2020)

#62

Post by xqb64 » Sat, Jun 20, 2026, 12:31 PM UTC

ozgrakkurt wrote: post #59

xqb64 wrote: post #35

How does this compare to Nora Sandler's "Writing a C compiler" in terms of the potential gains for the reader?

I found that book to be basically useless as a passive reader. She basically writes "do this" and you are supposed to do it. This course is much more valuable because it actually gives a lot of information. It really feels like most text books on compilers have massive "black hole" sections that pull you in on the technicals that you are not even supposed to use in the end. I found that his course and the LLVM book b…

The book is very much supposed to not be read passively.

Re: CS 6120: Advanced Compilers: The Self-Guided Online Course (2020)

#63

Post by revengerwizard » Wed, Jun 24, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

titzer wrote: post #2

The section on dynamic compilers is more or less all about trace compilation. Generally, trace compilation is a dead end and has been abandoned repeatedly. The more important concepts here are type feedback and speculation and deoptimization, as well as making fast compilers and tiering. The course overall looks good, and it's great that so much is available online, so well done, Adrian.

Tracing JIT compilers are very interesting, and there definitely needs to be more resources on such complex topic.