Compiler Research in the 21st Century
David A. Padua
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Abstract
It has been more than fifty years since the release of the first
commercial optimizing compiler by John Backus and his IBM team. Since
then, we have seen numerous new ideas. Although not all have led to
successful products, it is clear that there have been impressive
advances in compiling technology. Even though compilers are among the
oldest tools, the study of compiler technology is far from
exhausted. Further advances are sorely needed to improve software
quality and productivity, especially in this new era of
parallelism. In this talk, I will discuss some emerging areas of
research and some of the challenges we face as a discipline.