presentation_outline.md

LLVM presentation topic plan

• SSA form
  • Alternates to using phis
    • MLIR and Wasm block parameters
    • CPS equivalence (skip)
  • Alternatives for scheduling
    • Graal sea of nodes
  • Examples: loops, procedures, branches
  • Dominance
  • Benefits for opts
  • mem2reg
• LLVM architecture
  • Opcodes
  • Tiered architecture
    • Front-ends
      • ASTs: Clang
      • Language IRs: Rust HIR and MIR, Swift SIL, Flang FIR, Whitespace, etc.
      • General IRs: GIMPLE
    • Middle end: LLVM IR
    • Backends
• How to use LLVM in your own compiler
  • LLVM Kaleidoscope tutorial with Rust Inkwell bindings
  • Resources
• Alternatives
  • Compilers
    • GCC: motivate LLVM design decisions
    • QBE
  • Futamura (blow minds)
    • GraalVM Truffle
    • PyPy (is it extensible?)
  • Tradeoffs vs LLVM

Day 1: 2022-03-08

• Tiered compiler architecture
• LLVM intermediate representation
  • Static single-assignment form
  • Instructions
  • Type information

Day 2: 2022-03-10

• Compiler for Kaleidoscope
  • Kaleidoscope syntax: fib, mandelbrot
  • Lexing, parsing
    • Algebraic data types: Rust/OCaml vs C++
      • C++ virtual classes
    • Parser combinators: nom's JSON example
  • Lowering
    • Builder API
      • Simple example with Go
    • Control flow and SSA
    • Mapping constructs to LLVM IR
      • Object-oriented
        • Classes
        • Virtual methods
        • Single inheritance
        • Virtual inheritance
        • Interfaces
        • Boxing and unboxing
        • Class equivalence test
        • Class inheritance test
        • The new operator
      • Exception handling: covered on day 1
      • Advanced/functional
        • Lambda functions
        • Generators
  • Inkwell JIT example
• LLVM API
  • Safety, e.g., Value
• API bindings