COINS Compiler Infrastructure

1. Aims of the project

COINS (COmpiler INfraStructure) is a project to develop a compiler infrastructure which may be used as a base for constructing various compilers such as research compilers, educational compilers, and production compilers. COINS has two levels of intermediate representation, HIR: High-level Intermediate Representation, and LIR: Low-level Intermediate Representation. The infrastructure is composed of many components, such as front-ends, back-ends, various kind of optimizing and parallelizing modules. Optimizations and parallelizations are applied to HIR or LIR. Compiler developers can construct a compiler by selecting appropriate components. They may add their own components or modify some existing components to add new features to their compiler. The main aim of the project is to help compiler developers build good compilers in relatively short term and accelerate the development of compiler technology.

2. Benefit of using the COINS infrastructure

New compiling techniques can be implemented by adding or modifying a component without writing the rest of the compiler. For example, a compiler for a new machine can be built by adding a new code generator without developing the front-end. A compiler for a new language can be built by adding a new front-end without developing the back-end. Basic modules for code optimization and parallelization are available. Evaluation of compiling techniques becomes easy by comparing results based on the same infrastructure.

3. Structure of the COINS compiler

  Compiler control

    Compiler driver

  IR (Intermediate Representation) handler

    HIR handler

    LIR handler

    Symbol handler

  Front-end

    C language front-end

    Fortran front-end

  Middle

    Basic optimizer

    Advanced optimizer

    SSA (Static Single Assignment) optimizer

    Basic parallelizer

    SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processor) parallelizer

    SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data stream) parallelizer

    HIR-to-C source code generator

  Back-end

    Code generator-generator

    Sparc machine code generator

    x86 machine code generator

    x86_64 machine code generator (64 bit x86)

    ARM machine code generator

    THUMB machine code generator

    MIPS machine code generator

    SH-4 machine code generator

    PowerPC machine code generator

    Alpha machine code generator

    MicroBlaze machine code generator

    Instruction scheduler

    Software pipelining optimizer

    LIR-to-C source code generator

All modules are written in Java for ease of extension and increase of reliability.

Acknowledgments

The development of COINS was supported by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, under Grant "Special Coordination Fund for Promoting Science and Technology" (2000-2004).
It was supported also by the Information-Technology Promotion Agency, Japan on 2005.
The maintenance and improvements of COINS are now going on by the Association of COINS Compiler Infrastructure.
The opening of this Web site has been supported by the University of Electro-Communications and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.