Undergrad seeking Compiler Construction Grad Studies

> Hi! I am a fourth year undergrad from the University of Victoria
> (Victoria, BC, Canada) who will be graduating this summer. I am
> interested in a graduate studies program in the Compiler Construction and
> related areas. If anyone has information about such a program at their
> universities, any correspondence would be greatly appreciated!


I've given this advice before. Most people consider it good and so
I will give it again... Don't pick a school... PICK AN ADVISOR...
Grad school is not like undergrad. It is more like getting a job.


Go to the library and read articles on the current research in the
area. Read ACM Transaction of Programming Languages and the ACM PLDI
Compiler Construction conference. See who is doing the stuff that
interests you... Then, try to contact that advisor directly and tell
them why you think their work is the best approach.


Areas to think about:


    - Language definitions: Parallel languages are hot right now.
    - Front end parsers & semantics: This is kinda old hat but there
        may be something that interests you. NYU is doing GNU Ada compiler.
    - High level optimizations: Interprocedural and loop optimizations
        are hot. The second best group is Ken Kennedy's from Rice. (Damn,
        I won't make the political mistake of saying who is the best ;-).
    - Backend low level optimizations: Register allocation, software
        pipelining, and instruction scheduling are hot. Monica Lam of Stanford
        does good work in this area.
    - Compiler Construction Tools: Groups at Purdue and Minnesota have
        been doing work in building tools for LL parsers.
    - End user tools. Max Copperman of San Jose State (I think) has been
        looking into issues of debugging optimized code.


Needless to say, those researchers are tops and so many people will try
to work with them. If your advisor decides to leave the institution,
then follow him/her.


Thank you.


Steve Simmons
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