Kohdekoodaukseen

Kohdekoodaukseen, often translated as target coding or destination coding, refers to the process of translating intermediate code or a high-level programming language into machine code that a specific processor architecture can execute. This is a crucial phase in the compilation process, where the abstract instructions generated earlier by the compiler are made concrete for a particular hardware.

The primary goal of target code generation is to produce efficient and correct machine code. This involves selecting appropriate machine instructions for each intermediate representation operation, managing processor registers effectively, and optimizing the code for speed and memory usage. Different target architectures, such as x86, ARM, or RISC-V, have distinct instruction sets, register sets, and memory addressing modes, meaning that the generated code for one architecture will not be directly executable on another.

Key aspects of target code generation include instruction selection, register allocation, and instruction scheduling. Instruction selection determines which machine instruction(s) best implement a given intermediate code operation. Register allocation assigns program variables to the finite number of processor registers to minimize memory accesses. Instruction scheduling reorders instructions to exploit parallelism and avoid pipeline stalls, thereby improving performance. The output of this stage is typically an object file, which can then be linked with other object files and libraries to create an executable program.