LLVMBackendForTimber

LLVM backend for Timber

What is LLVM?

LLVM, the Low Level Virtual Machine, is a virtual instruction set, a collection of program transformations and optimisations and backends for many architectures.

What is Timber?

Timber is a pure, strict functional language with Haskell-like syntax and a object-oriented monadic layer. Timber is intended for programming embedded systems with some real-time constraints. Presently, a POSIX implementation is available; an ARM version, running on bare hardware, is soon forthcoming.

What is this project?

The Timber compiler compiles source code to C, which is then compiled by gcc (or some other C compiler). Before emitting C code, the compiler has transformed the program into an intermediate, imperative language. The aim of his project is to emit LLVM code instead of C and to investigate the use of various LLVM optimisations in the Timber context.

Outline of project activities:

Learn the Timber langage.
Learn the overall structure of the Timber compiler (it is written in Haskell).
Learn the LLVM instruction set and some example uses of LLVM (several tutorials can be found on the LLVM site).
Write a new Haskell module, emitting LLVM from the internal Kindle language.
Evaluate the result.
As time permits: experiment with different LLVM backend passes.

Prerequisites: Functional programming, Programming languages, Compiler construction

Contact: Björn von Sydow

Number of people: 1-2