Stalin (Scheme implementation)

Stalin

Developer(s)	Jeffrey Mark Siskind
Stable release	0.11 / Oct 2, 2006
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Programming language
License	GPL
Website	cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~qobi/software.html

Stalin is an aggressive optimizing batch whole-program Scheme compiler written by Jeffrey Mark Siskind. It uses advanced flow analysis and type inference and a variety of other optimization techniques to produce code (using C as an intermediate language) that is extremely fast, particularly for numeric codes. In a number of tests it has outperformed hand-written C, sometimes by a considerable margin. Stalin is intended for production use in generating an optimized executable.

The compiler itself runs slowly, and there is little or no support for debugging or other niceties. Full RnRS Scheme is not supported, but rather a coherent subset amenable to optimization. The compiler itself does lifetime analysis and hence does not generate as much garbage as might be expected, but global reclamation of storage is done using the Boehm garbage collector.

Stalin is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and is available online.

External links

• Stalin home page
• Research Statement by Siskind (compares Stalin with other Scheme compilers, and states that "Stalin often generates code that outperforms handwritten c and Fortran code.")