EECS 483: Compiler Construction🔗

Syllabus --Winter 2025

Meeting places & times🔗

• Lecture: 1010 DOW Monday and Wednesday 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM.
  Recordings available on Canvas afterwards.

• Discussion: 1060 FMCRB Friday 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM

Course staff & office hours🔗

Learning Objectives🔗

EECS 483 covers the implementation of efficient compilers for programming languages. The course focuses on the connections between language features and the impact they have on the entire compiler pipeline. The course gradually builds up to an optimizing compiler for a dynamically typed language. We cover the compiler frontend, intermediate representations, backends, runtime systems as well as program analysis and optimizations.

Coursework🔗

Students will be submit 5 programming assignments implementing a compiler, as well as a midterm and final exams. Homework assignments can be completed either alone or in groups of two.

External Links🔗

This webpage contains the syllabus, materials from lecture, as well as the homework assignments. We will additionally use the following sites:

• Grades and video lectures will be posted on Canvas

• The Piazza bulletin board will be our main discussion forum.

• Homework assignments will be submitted through Gradescope

Materials🔗

Software🔗

Programming assignments will use several pieces of software:

• Rust, version 1.84 this includes the package manager/build tool Cargo

• nasm, an open-source assembler

Rust is supported by many editors you may use any editor you wish.

Compilers written in the class will target x86_64, and be graded on Linux, and code is not cross-platform. I will provide pointers to how Mac users can easily make their code work on Linux, but Windows users are recommended to install a Linux distribution using WSL for testing. Instructions are provided here.

Books🔗

This course has no required textbook. Instead, detailed notes and/or slides will be included on this webpage for every lecture. As an additional reference, the following textbooks may be useful to you.

Online resources🔗

Rust Resources

• Rust Learning Materials. We especially recommend the Rust Book as a thorough introduction to most relevant language features. You might be interested in this version of the Rust Book which has interactive quizzes to test your understanding.

  This blog post has some good advice on learning Rust for the first time.

• An interactive tutorial on using Git

X86 Resources

• x86 interpreter

• UVa x86 Assembly Guide

• Mac OS Stack Alignment

• C Calling Convention

• Wikibooks X86 Assembly

X64 Resources

• X64 Instruction Reference (very detailed)

• X64 Cheat Sheet (Brown University)

• Another cheat sheet

• A tutorial on NASM (specifically x64- and macOS-related issues)

Lectures🔗

This table specifies the lecture schedule; topics are tentative. Lecture notes/slides will be added as the lectures take place

Testing🔗

Testing your code is sufficiently important that we’ve devoted an entire page to it. Please read these notes, for each and every assignment you work on.

Homework and Exam schedule🔗

Course policies🔗

Collaboration and academic integrity🔗

Programming assignments may be completed with a partner or solo.

You must collaborate with your assigned partner or team, as specified, on homework assignments. You may request help from any staff member on homework. (When you are working with a partner, we strongly recommend that you request help with your partner, rather than solo.) You may use the Piazza bulletin board to ask questions regarding assignments, so long as your questions (and answers) do not reveal information regarding solutions. You may not get any help from anyone else on a homework assignment; all material submitted must be your own. If in doubt, ask a member of the course staff.

Providing illicit help to another student is also cheating, and will be punished the same as receiving illicit help. It is your responsibility to safeguard your own work.

Students who cheat will be reported to the university’s office on academic integrity and penalized by the course staff, at our discretion, up to and including failing the course.

If you are unclear on any of these policies, please ask a member of the course staff.

Homework🔗

We will be using the following gradescope page for homework submissions.

Late days & late work🔗

Homework will (typically) be due Friday at 11:59pm. Late work will be accepted for the next two days: a 10% deduction if by Saturday 11:59pm and a 20% deduction if by Sunday 11:59pm. After that, late submissions will not be accepted. This policy generally holds unless otherwise specified in the assignment.

Grades🔗

Your grade will be based on your performance on the programming assignments and exams. Each assignment is worth 14% of your final grade, totaling 70%. The midterm and final are each worth 15%.

Course grades overall will not be curved, but exams will be curved if necessary to match recent course median grades.

The estimated mapping of raw point totals to letter grades is given below. Please note that these grade boundaries may move slightly in either direction at the discretion of the instructor: if a particular breakpoint falls in the middle of a tight cluster of numeric grades, we will attempt to move the breakpoint to give that whole cluster the same letter grade. If, near the end of the semester, you are concerned that your grade is hovering near a breakpoint, see me to discuss your concerns.