Available: Portable C & Pascal compilers for micro's
Ed Keizer
keie at tjalk.UUCP
Sat Apr 14 07:51:34 AEST 1984
ANNOUNCING THE AMSTERDAM COMPILER KIT
The Amsterdam Compiler Kit is an integrated set of tools for making
(cross) compilers and assemblers, especially for microcomputers. It has been
developed in the Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Vrije
Universiteit by and for university computer scientists. The package, which
runs on the UNIX operating system, contains the complete SOURCES of all the
programs, plus documentation describing how to modify the tool kit, for exam-
ple to add new programming languages or new target machines. Since all the
sources and documentation are supplied, the kit is ideal not only to use "as
is" but also as an aid to your teaching and research activities in the areas
of programming languages, compilers, and microcomputers.
A description of the Amsterdam Compiler Kit can be found in Communica-
tions of the ACM, vol. 26, pp. 654-660, (Sept. 1983). The basic idea is that
programs called "front ends" translate the input program into a standard in-
termediate code called "EM." A program in EM can be optimized and then fed
into a "back end" for translation into the assembly code of the target
machine. The back end is table driven, and uses a clever heuristic search
process to generate high quality object code, as described in the CACM arti-
cle. The resulting assembly code is then fed into a table-driven assembler-
linker for translation into an executable binary file. The assemblers can
also be used to assemble and link hand-written assembly code programs.
The current distribution contains the following items:
Front ends: Pascal, C
Optimizer: Peephole
Back ends: 68000, 8086, VAX, PDP-11
Assemblers: 8080, 8086, 6800, 6809, 68000, Z80, Z0000, PDP-11, 6502
Misc: test programs, EM interpreters and assembler, libraries
Various other items are in preparation, including a Basic front end, global
optimizer, back end tables for the 6502, Z8000 and other machines, and an as-
sembler for the NS 16032. These items are NOT included in the current pack-
age, but may be released for an additional fee in the future.
The tool kit itself is known to run on the following systems:
PDP-11/44 with V7 UNIX
VAX-11/750 with 4.1BSD UNIX
Bleasdale, Philips, and Altos 68000 systems with System III UNIX
Since the complete sources are included in the package, the user has the pos-
sibility of installing the package on other UNIX systems.
The Amsterdam Compiler Kit is available to universities for $500. For
commercial users a license for internal use is $10,000. Both licenses include
all the sources. To obtain the license form, send your real-mail address to:
decvax!mcvax!vu44!edg
Technical queries can be directed to Andy Tanenbaum at:
decvax!mcvax!vu44!ast
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