Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation

Author: Niklaus Wirth
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-07-01
Features: About the Cover of This Book The image on the cover of this book is selected from the author's collection of folk art from the northwestern coast. It is a photograph of a Chilkat blanket. This blanket was woven by a Tlingit woman in southeastern Alaska in the late 19th century using very fine ropes made of red cedar inner bark and mountain goat wool. Weaving such a blanket typically takes 6 to 9 months. The pattern of the blanket is divided into three parts. The central section depicts a whale swimming in the water; the whale's head is at the bottom, forming a split shape; the section in the middle with the whale's face is actually the whale's body (in this type of art, the shape resembling a whale's face does not represent the whale's actual face); the whale's side fins are on both sides of the body, and the top is the whale's tail. Each part of this design, in itself, serves a functional purpose and does not convey any meaning; but when combined correctly, it depicts a whale swimming in the water, symbolizing the power and privileges of the village chief who owns the blanket. Similarly, each component of a compiler has a certain function, but only when these components are combined in the right way can the compiler's functionality be fully realized. Designing and weaving such a blanket requires skill, just as constructing a compiler of industrial quality requires skill. Every industry has a set of specific tools, materials, design elements, and overall patterns, and all of these must be combined in a way that meets the needs and desires of the intended users.
Target Audience for This Book The intended readers of this book are computer professionals, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates who need to understand the issues related to the design and construction of single-machine high-level compilers. We assume that readers have taken courses such as data structures, algorithms, compiler design and implementation, computer architecture, and assembly language programming, or have equivalent professional experience. This book meets the challenges of modern languages and architectures, preparing readers to tackle future compiler design problems.
This book covers all advanced topics in the design and implementation of modern microprocessor compilers. It begins with advanced issues in the field of compiler design and provides a comprehensive and in-depth discussion of various important code optimization techniques. It analyzes the relative importance of different optimizations and presents effective methods for implementing them.
Key Features of This Book
● Lays the foundation for understanding the main issues in high-level compiler design
● Provides an in-depth exploration of optimization issues
● Uses Sun's SPARC, IBM's POWER and PowerPC, DEC's Alpha, and Intel's Pentium and related commercial compilers as examples to illustrate compiler architecture, intermediate code design, and various optimization methods
● Presents numerous clearly defined algorithms for code generation, optimization, and other issues
● Introduces ICAN (Informal Compiler Algorithm Notation), a language designed by the author to describe algorithms in a clear and concise manner.