List of Compilers - Research Compilers

Research Compilers

Research compilers are mostly not robust or complete enough to handle real, large applications. They are used mostly for fast prototyping new language features and new optimizations in research areas.

• Open64: one of the most popular research compilers today, many branches exist. Here is a list of research papers from the CGO 2009. (Open64 merges the open source changes from the PathScale compiler mentioned.)
• ROSE compiler framework: an open source compiler framework to generate source-to-source analyzers and translators for C/C++ and Fortran, developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Polaris compiler for Fortran
  • Cetus for C/C++, successor of Polaris compiler
• MILEPOST GCC: interactive plugin-based open-source research compiler that combines the strength of GCC and the flexibility of the common Interactive Compilation Interface that transforms production compilers into interactive research toolsets.
• Programming Without Coding Technology (PWCT) A specialist innovative technology wherein the programmer need not write code but can visually specify every functional aspect of the program similar to flowcharts and algorithms. PWCT include (Mahmoud Programming Language, RPWI Environment & DoubleS Programming Paradigm).PWCT is free-open source. PWCT uses Interaction by presenting a GUI between a Human language and a Programming language so doing anything require knowing Procedure instead of being Declarative.
• Interactive Compilation Interface - a plugin system with high-level API to transform production-quality compilers such as GCC into powerful and stable research infrastructure while avoiding developing new research compilers from scratch.
• SUIF: inactive since 2001
  • MACHINE SUIF a branch focusing on machine-specific analyses and optimizations
• PIPS: a source-to-source compiler framework with a Fortran 77, Fortran 95 and C front-end, focussing on advanced analyses and transformations.
• OpenIMPACT Compiler
• Phoenix optimization and analysis framework by Microsoft
• Very Portable Optimizer (VPO) from the University of Virginia
• COINS compiler infrastructure
• Trimaran for research in instruction-level parallelism
• Parafrase-2 Inactive. It is a source-to-source vectorizing/parallelizing compiler, with Fortran and C front-ends.
  • The PARADIGM compiler. Derived from Parafrase-2, it is a source-to-source research compiler for distributed-memory multicomputers for Fortran 77 and HPF.
• MLton standard ML compiler (SML compiler)
• Jikes Research Virtual machine(RVM): a research compiler for Java
• Soot: a Java Optimization framework
• The Scale compiler
• HotpathVM: a Java virtual machine using a trace-based just-in-time compiler
• ILDJIT: a compilation framework that targets the CIL bytecode that includes both static and dynamic compilers. ILDJIT provides a plugin-based framework for static, as well as dynamic tasks like code translations, code analysis, code optimizations, runtime instrumentation and memory management. Its plugin-based framework allows users to easily customize execution both at installation time, as well as at run-time (by dynamically loading and unloading plugins without perturbing execution). ILDJIT thus enables efficient co-design research at the architectural-boundary. Moreover, its multi-threaded design allows novel introspection of parallel compilation strategies to reduce overheads and dynamically optimize running code on today's x86 multi-core systems.