Compilers

Profile Guided Optimization, or PGO, is an approach to optimization where the compiler uses profile information to make better optimization decisions for the program.  Profiling is the process of gathering information of how the program is used during runtime.  In a nutshell, PGO is…

By now you've learned that the CLR, Windows Phone Client, and Windows Phone Services teams got together to develop "Compiler in the Cloud". All Windows Phone 8 apps written in .NET technologies will get the benefit of this collaboration. The end goal? Really fast…

Multicore JIT is a .NET 4.5 compiler technology that uses parallelization to reduce the JIT compilation time during application startup.Multicore JIT team says: "With Multicore JIT, methods are compiled on two cores in parallel. The more code you execute on your startup path, the more…

Technical Fellow Steve Lucco (architect and lead engineer of IE's Chakra JS VM) and Google's V8 and Dart architect Lars Bak discuss JavaScript, from a virtual machine perspective (implementer's view point). IE and Chrome employ different strategies (although they do share some things in…

The VC++ 2012 auto-vectorizer tries to make loops in your code run faster by automatically vectorizing your code using the SSE instructions available in all current mainline Intel and AMD chips. In Visual C++ 2012, auto-vectorization is on by default and requires only that you…

In this installment of GoingNative, it's all about the latest C++ compiler technology from Microsoft. Most of the time is spent discussing VC11's Auto-Vectorizer with a few short forays into other VC compiler improvements (like Auto-Parallelizer). You meet the lead developer for VC11's…

What is Roslyn? Traditionally, compilers are black boxes – source code goes in one end and object files or assemblies come out the other end. The Roslyn project changes that model by opening up the Visual Basic and C# compilers as APIs. These APIs allow tools and end-users to share in the wealth of…

Typed Assembly Language (TAL) extends traditional untyped assembly languages with typing annotations, memory management primitives, and a sound set of typing rules. These typing rules guarantee the memory safety, control flow safety, and type safety of TAL programs. Moreover, the typing constructs…

Lucian Wischik is an engineer who spends a great deal of his time making Async magic happen in the C# and VB compilers. With the recent release of Visual Studio Async CTP SP1 Refresh, come several low-level improvements in how asynchrony is orchestrated by the compiler infrastructure.…

Happy Birthday, Channel 9!!! We are 7 years old today! Hard to believe... What a great 7 years it has been. THANK YOU, NINERS! In celebration, we bring you the latest episode of Checking In with Erik Meijer. Our very special guest is Eric Lippert. To Erik, thank you for some many years of great…