Compile Farms for Compiler Courses

Hi there!


I recently taught the compiler course at UCI. I was considering
having students generate code for a real machine, but alas, in a 5
week summer course, that was not really feasible. So they used a
weird stack machine of my own design.


However, the experience of teaching this course got me started
thinking about a "compile farm" for students. What I mean by this
is a set of different machines (using the same OS, most likely
NetBSD) that each have a different processor. Students would select
a processor they want to create code for, get an account on the
corresponding machine, and could hack away on their things in a
"native" environment.


I have collected a MIPS-based Cobalt Qube and a 68040-based Apple
Quadra so far, since those are the architectures I personally like
best. I was wondering whether anybody would be interested in
offering other machines or had any comments on this idea. Just
email me. :-)


Peter


PS: Yes, I know, there are emulators for a variety of processors.
In my opinion though, nothing beats working on the "real thing"
with all it's complications... :-)
--
Peter H. Froehlich <<><>> http://www.ics.uci.edu/~pfroehli/
OpenPGP: D465 CBDD D9D2 0D77 C5AF 353E C86C 2AD9 A6E2 309E

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