News
Action Required: Exam Registration, Project Discussion SchedulingWritten on 23.01.26 (last change on 23.01.26) by Joachim Meyer tl;dr:
tl;dr:
Hi all, the first exam will take place on 10 Feb 2026, 9-11 in E1.3 LH 002. You can register until one week before the exam date. Register in LSF now, so you don't forget! If you cannot register in LSF and want to get a Schein, please register by writing an E-Mail to Joachim Meyer. Taking the exam to get a Schein is on your own risk. We cannot guarantee that the Schein will be accepted for your study program. The project discussions will take place from Thursday, 19 Feb 2026, until Tuesday, 24 Feb 2026, in person in room 4.01, E1.3. Please enter your group's preferences for timeslots on these days in the poll linked on the Materials page in the CMS until no later than Friday, 06 Feb 2026. Only one person should enter the preferences per group (under the group's name), please agree on them beforehand. Select as many time slots as possible where all group members are available. Your meeting will take place in a ~25-minute period within one of the selected time slots. We will announce the exact times for each group once we have assigned them after 06 Feb 2026. To pass the project and thus the course, students must participate in their group's project discussion. At least one group member should have the project source code and a working build available on a laptop. As a reminder: the hard deadline for the project is the 13 Feb 2026, 18:00. Anything that is changed after this deadline will not be considered. There will be one last office hour to discuss questions regarding the project: 3 Feb 2026, 10:00-11:30. We have also added a poll to schedule the project competition presentation after the project discussions. Please find the link in the Materials section and fill it in, by 06 Feb 2026. Best, the CC Team |
Office Hour Jan 13th, No Tutorial on Jan 12thWritten on 07.01.26 by Joachim Meyer Happy New Year, everyone! We will offer another office hour next Tuesday, Jan 13th at 10-11:30. Happy New Year, everyone! We will offer another office hour next Tuesday, Jan 13th at 10-11:30. There will be no tutorials on Jan 12th. The next exercise sheet will be handed out on Tuesday, Jan 13th. |
Lectures This WeekWritten on 15.12.25 by Joachim Meyer As we are approaching the winter break, we will skip tomorrow's lecture and have a Christmas Lecture on Thursday (Dec 18). Additionally, there will be no exercise sheet tomorrow - so use the time to recap the lecture contents & exercises thus far and work on the project! While the tutorials will… Read more As we are approaching the winter break, we will skip tomorrow's lecture and have a Christmas Lecture on Thursday (Dec 18). Additionally, there will be no exercise sheet tomorrow - so use the time to recap the lecture contents & exercises thus far and work on the project! While the tutorials will restart Jan 5 with a recap (bring your questions!), the first lecture next year will be Jan 13. |
Course EvaluationWritten on 11.12.25 by Sebastian Hack Dear all, we'd be very happy if you could fill out the course evaluation forms (one for the lecture, one for the tutorial). Any constructive criticism is very welcome and has helped us in the past to improve the course. Your opinion matters! You can find the links in the Material section of the CMS. |
Expression Parsing & Semantic Analysis Office Hour: 09.12. 10:00-11:30Written on 03.12.25 by Joachim Meyer We will offer an Office Hour for the project, next Tuesday, Dec 9, 10-11:30, Room E1.3 4.01. We will offer an Office Hour for the project, next Tuesday, Dec 9, 10-11:30, Room E1.3 4.01. Also, we just released this week's exercise sheet, with a bit of a delay. Please find it in the Material section. |
Group Project Registration Deadline Tonight & Project Start TomorrowWritten on 11.11.25 by Joachim Meyer Hi! Just a quick reminder that the group project registration deadline is tonight, 23:59! The first project assignment will be released tomorrow at noon. Hi! Just a quick reminder that the group project registration deadline is tonight, 23:59! The first project assignment will be released tomorrow at noon. Good luck! |
Solo Project Deadline Approaching - Grading InformationWritten on 05.11.25 by Joachim Meyer Hi all, here's a reminder that the solo project has a hard deadline for submission, this Sunday, Nov 9th, 23:59 CET. Hi all, here's a reminder that the solo project has a hard deadline for submission, this Sunday, Nov 9th, 23:59 CET. The group project phase starts next week. We also want to make sure you understand what the impact of the solo project is with regard to your final grade. Good luck! |
Solo Project Office Hour Nov 4. 10-11:30Written on 29.10.25 by Joachim Meyer We will offer an Office Hour for the project, next Tuesday, Nov 4, 10-11:30, Room E1.3 4.01. This office hour is the place to get support with the RegEx project and receive hints on what might be missing to pass more tests. We refined the project description in a few places, so it might be a… Read more We will offer an Office Hour for the project, next Tuesday, Nov 4, 10-11:30, Room E1.3 4.01. This office hour is the place to get support with the RegEx project and receive hints on what might be missing to pass more tests. We refined the project description in a few places, so it might be a good time to have a look at the updates. Please remember, the project is due 2025-Nov-9, 23:59, CET.
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First Exercise Sheet available & Project Registration closes tonightWritten on 21.10.25 by Joachim Meyer Hello everyone, please note that the first exercise sheet is now available in the Materials section. Secondly, a quick reminder that the project registration will close tonight, 23:59. Hello everyone, please note that the first exercise sheet is now available in the Materials section. Secondly, a quick reminder that the project registration will close tonight, 23:59. We will make the assignment for the solo project available in the Materials section tomorrow by noon. If you have any questions, please post them in the Forum - this is the primary contact point for the course! |
First Lecture & Tutorial PreferencesWritten on 13.10.25 (last change on 14.10.25) by Joachim Meyer Welcome everybody! We're glad you chose to hear Compiler Construction (CC) this year. Tomorrow, Oct 14, we're kicking the lecture off at 08:30 in lecture hall 003 (E 1.3). If you… Read more Welcome everybody! We're glad you chose to hear Compiler Construction (CC) this year. Tomorrow, Oct 14, we're kicking the lecture off at 08:30 in lecture hall 003 (E 1.3). If you registered early, you might not have been able to select a tutorial preference yet. Please select your tutorial preference until Sunday, 19 Oct. Finally, to register for the project: please follow the steps at How to Attend. See you in class! |
Compiler Construction
The course treats compiler construction for imperative programming languages. This includes lexical, syntactical, and semantic analysis as well as static program analysis, optimization, and code generation. This course provides all necessary theoretical knowledge required to implement a compiler from scratch, which forms the practical part of the lecture.
Syllabus
- Lexing and Parsing (LL, LR)
- Semantic Analysis, Type Checking
- Foundations of Program Analysis by Abstract Interpretation
- Program Optimizations and their Analyses
- SSA
- LLVM
- Instruction Selection
- Scheduling
- Register Allocation
- Polyhedral Compilation
- DSLs
Lecture Dates
- The lectures will be recorded and made available online.
- Time and Place: Tuesdays: 8:30, Thursdays: 12:15, E1.3 HS003
- First Lecture: Tuesday, 14.10., 8:30, E1.3 HS003
Modus Operandi
There will be voluntary exercise sheets that are discussed in tutorials.
To get a course certificate, students must pass the final exam and the projects. If you pass both, the exam and the projects, the final grades for the course will be computed as the (equally weighted) arithmetic mean between your exam grade and your project grade, rounded towards your exam grade.
The practical projects are to be implemented in C++. The first individually, the second in groups of 2-3 students. The grade will depend on how many tests your projects pass, how much the individual students contributed to the project, and the demonstrated understanding of the project in the oral presentation. In the end of the lecture period, we will host a competition for the student compiler implementations. The top performing groups of the competition will earn a 0.3 (or 0.4) bonus to their total course grades.