[LLVMdev] Back ends for instructional use?

[Adve, Vikram Sadanand]

I'm trying to decide whether to use either the MIPS or ARM back ends for course projects in our introductory compiler class.  I'd like to use something that has a stable back end, so that the students can use the selector, probably without changes, and do a project on register allocation and stack layout.  We don't have MIPS or ARM hardware (other than possibly a few donated Android phones to play with), so a simulator like Spim will be essential.

1. Is there a similar open-source or free simulator for ARM that would run llc- or lli-generated code on Linux?

2. How stable is the MIPS back end?  We need the whole thing for testing, and as a reference implementation.

Thanks!

--Vikram
Professor, Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
http://llvm.org/~vadve