CS 4240
Compilers and Interpreters
Fall 2025
Announcements:

Instructor:
Qirun Zhang,
Office: 2324 Klaus
Office Hours: Wednesdays 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM or by appointment
Email: qrzhang@gatech.edu

Teaching Assistants:
Camille Bossut,
Office: Open lounge area in front of KACB 2319
Office Hours: See Piazza
Email: cbossut21@gatech.edu

Ethan Fox,
Office: Open lounge area in front of KACB 2319
Office Hours: See Piazza
Email: efox36@gatech.edu

Jinghao Jiang,
Office: Open lounge area in front of KACB 2319
Office Hours: See Piazza
Email: jjiang409@gatech.edu

Tejas Joshi,
Office: Open lounge area in front of KACB 2319
Office Hours: See Piazza
Email: tejas.joshi@gatech.edu

Andy Wanna,
Office: Open lounge area in front of KACB 2319
Office Hours: See Piazza
Email: awanna3@gatech.edu

Lectures:
Time: Mon/Wed 9:30 AM - 10:45 PM
Location: Scheller 200

Course Summary:
This course will cover the principles and foundations of compiler design. The course project will be structured around the design of a compiler for a small, but expressive, imperative language to be translated for execution on a simulator of the MIPS processor. After successfully completing the course, students will be able to design and develop all major components of a compiler.

References:

Assignments:
  • Homework 1
    • Deadline: 9/10/2025 by 23:59 pm EST.

  • Homework 2
    • Deadline: 10/15/2025 by 23:59 pm EST.

  • Homework 3
    • Deadline: 11/24/2025 by 23:59 pm EST.

  • Worksheets
    • Deadline: Each lecture day by 23:59 pm EST.

Grading:
Grading breakdown:
  • Written Homework: 15%
  • Programming Projects: 30%
  • Midterm Exam: 20%
  • Final Exam: 30%
  • Class Participation: 5% (1% for Assignment 0 and 4% for Worksheets)
  • Project BONUS: 5%

Late assignment submission policy:
  • Within 1 hour after the assignment is due: see the course syllabus on Piazza;
  • Within 24 hours after the assignment is due: 50% point deduction;
  • More than 24 hours late: 100% point deduction.

Schedule (tentative):

Date Topic Reading Remark
8/18 Compiler Structure, Intermediate Representations
  • [CT11] Chapter 1; Sections 5.3.1 - 5.3.3
  • Homework 1 assigned
8/20 Control Flow Graphs, Reaching Definitions
  • [CT11] Sections 5.2.2, 5.3.4
  • Project 1 assigned.
8/25 Reaching Definitions, Data Flow Analysis
  • [CT11] Page 491 of Section 9.2.4
8/27 Redundancy Elimination, Value Numbering, Dominator
  • [CT11] Sections 8.3, 8.4.1, 8.5.1, 9.2.1
9/1 No class (school holiday)
9/3 Lazy Code Motion, Available Expression Analysis
  • [CT11] Sections 10.3, 9.2.4
9/8 Available Expression Analysis, Constant Propagation
  • [CT11] Sections 9.2.4, 9.3.6 (skip material related to SSA form)
9/10 Project 1 & Tiger IR Help Session
  • Homework 1 due.
9/15 Copy Propagation, Constant Propagation Revisited
  • [CT11] Section 9.2.4
9/17 Instruction Selection
  • [CT11] Sections 11.1 - 11.4
  • Project 1 due.
  • Project 2 assigned.
  • Project BONUS assigned.
9/22 Peephole Matching, Register Allocation
  • [CT11] Sections 11.5, 13.4
9/24 Register Allocation (contd)
  • [CT11] Section 13.4
9/29 Instruction Scheduling
  • [CT11] Sections 12.1 - 12.3
  • Homework 2 assigned.
10/1 MIPS Processor Architecture, SPIM simulator
10/6 No class (school holiday)
10/8 Procedure Abstraction, MIPS Calling Convention
  • [CT11] Sections 6.1 - 6.5
10/13 Global Instruction Scheduling, Software Pipelining
  • [CT11] Sections 12.4, 12.5
10/15 Static Single Assignment Form
  • [CT11] Section 9.3
  • Homework 2 due.
10/20 Midterm Review (Part 1)
10/22 Midterm Review (Part 2)
  • Project 2 due.
10/27 Mid Term
10/29 Lexical Analysis, Introduction to Parsing
  • [CT11] Sections 2.1 - 2.3
  • Project 3 assigned.
11/3 Context Free Grammars, Top Down Parsing
  • [CT11] Sections 3.1 - 3.3.1
  • Homework 3 assigned.
11/5 LL(1) Parsing
  • [CT11] Sections 3.3.1, 3.3.3
11/10 Finite State Automata
  • [CT11] Sections 2.4, 2.5
11/12 Attribute Grammars, Type Checking
  • [CT11] Sections 4.1 - 4.3
11/17 ANTLR Overview and Demonstration
11/19 Course Review
11/24 Homework 3 Help Session
  • Homework 3 due.
  • Project 3 due.
  • Project BONUS due.
11/26 No class (school break)

Misc:
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