CS 4121/5121
Introduction to Compilers Practicum
Spring 2022

2022 CS 4121/5121 Compiler Bakeoff

The “Best Compiler” title gives each member of the winning team both bragging rights and an attractive plaque announcing their excellence in the compiler-writing domain. PA6 submissions will be treated as submissions to the contest; however, performance in the bakeoff does not affect course grades.

Criteria

Compilers are compared using the following criteria, listed roughly in order of importance:

Correctness of generated code and of compile-time error checking.
Speed of the generated code across a wide selection of benchmarks, including object-oriented benchmarks.
Length and clarity of the compiler implementation, and time required to compile the benchmark programs.

Benchmarks

Compilers are evaluated using several Xi and Rho programs, testing both language features and performance. These benchmarks test the performance of arrays, loops, recursion, redundant computations, and more.

More detailed statistics are available.

Result

There were many excellent project submissions. The winning compiler for Spring 2022 is the one developed by the group of Omkar Bhalerao, Vivian Ding, Felix Roz, and William Wang. Their compiler, implemented in Kotlin, was one of the most correct, while also generating easily the fastest code. Their optimizations included copy and constant propagation, dead code removal, and function inlining.

Honorable mentions go to two other groups:

Henry Chen, Samantha Cobado, Jackson Subcleff, and Ralph Wang. Their compiler, implemented in Java, was highly correct and generated the second-fastest code.
Andrei Shpilenok. This compiler, implemented in Rust, was highly correct, especially for Xi features. The compiler itself was also extremely fast.

Past Bakeoff Results and Winners