Chris Lattner

Lattner started programming in high school with Basic. He learned machine language programming with Pascal and Assembly, followed by C and C++.{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCd3CzGSte8 |title=Chris Lattner: Compilers, LLVM, Swift, TPU, and ML Accelerators {{!}} Lex Fridman Podcast #21 |date=2019-05-13 |last=Lex Fridman |access-date=2025-02-01 |via=YouTube}}

Lattner studied computer science at the University of Portland, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 2000. While in Oregon, he worked as an operating system developer, enhancing Sequent Computer Systems's DYNIX/ptx.

{{cite web |first=Chris

|last=Lattner

|title=Resume

|url=http://nondot.org/sabre/Resume.html

|access-date=2013-04-27}}{{Cite web|date=2020-08-09|title=Swift's Chris Lattner on the Possibility of Machine Learning-Enabled Compilers|url=https://thenewstack.io/swifts-chris-lattner-on-the-possibility-of-machine-learning-enabled-compilers/|access-date=2020-11-17|website=The New Stack|language=en-US}}

In late 2000, Lattner joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a research assistant and M.Sc. student. While working with Vikram Adve, he designed and began implementing LLVM, an innovative infrastructure for optimizing compilers, which was the subject of his 2002 Master of Science thesis.{{Cite web |title=LLVM: An Infrastructure for Multi-Stage Optimization |url=https://llvm.org/pubs/2002-12-LattnerMSThesis.html |access-date=2022-10-03 |website=llvm.org}}

In his PhD thesis, completed in 2005 also with Vikram Adve, Lattner used LLVM for research on optimizing pointer-intensive programs.{{cite thesis |degree=PhD |first=Christopher Arthur|last=Lattner |title=Macroscopic Data Structure Analysis and Optimization |publisher=University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |date=2005 |url=https://llvm.org/pubs/2005-05-04-LattnerPHDThesis.html |website=llvm.org |hdl=2142/10994|id={{ProQuest|304984703}}|oclc=64581935}}{{DBLP}}

At Apple, Lattner was primarily responsible for building a new compiler infrastructure based around LLVM and creating the Swift programming language for building apps on Apple platforms.

Lattner served as the Senior Director and Architect, Developer Tools Department from January 2013 to January 2017 leading the Xcode, Instruments, and compiler teams.{{cite web |url=http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/2013/acm-tech-awards-2012 |title=Award Winners Made Breakthroughs in Network Efficiency, Data Mining, Education, Game Theory, Programming, and Community Problem-Solving |publisher=ACM |date=April 9, 2013 |access-date=April 27, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130501235417/http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/2013/acm-tech-awards-2012/ |archive-date=May 1, 2013 |url-status=dead }}{{Official URL}}{{Cite web |title=Chris Lattner left Swift core team {{!}} Hacker News |url=https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30416070 |access-date=2022-09-29 |website=news.ycombinator.com}}

In 2005, Apple Inc. hired Lattner to begin work bringing LLVM to production quality for use in Apple products. Over time, Lattner built out the technology, personally implementing many major new features in LLVM, formed and built a team of LLVM developers at Apple, started the Clang project, took responsibility for evolving Objective-C (contributing to the blocks language feature, and driving the ARC and Objective-C literals features), and nurtured the open source community (leading it through many open source releases). Apple first shipped LLVM-based technology in the 10.5 (and 10.4.8) OpenGL stack as a just-in-time (JIT) compiler, shipped the llvm-gcc compiler in the integrated development environment (IDE) Xcode 3.1, Clang 1.0 in Xcode 3.2, Clang 2.0 (with C++ support) in Xcode 4.0, and LLDB, libc++, assemblers, and disassembler technology in later releases.{{cite journal |first= Constantine A. |last= Murenin |date= May 2008 |url= https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/login/2008-08/openpdfs/bsdcan08.pdf |title= Conference Reports, BSDCan: The BSD Conference, BSD licensed C++ compiler |journal= ;login: |publisher= USENIX |publication-date= August 2008 |volume= 33 |issue= 4 |page= 114 |issn= 1044-6397 }}

Lattner's work involved designing, implementing, and evangelizing the LLVM and Clang compilers, productizing and driving the debugger LLDB, and overseeing development of the low-level toolchain. As of 2016, LLVM technologies are the core of Apple's developer tools and the default toolchain on FreeBSD.{{cite mailing list |url=https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2012-November/037610.html |first=Brooks |last=Davis |title=Heads Up: Clang now the default on x86 |date=November 5, 2012 |access-date=2019-05-12}}

In June 2010, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on programming languages (SIGPLAN) gave Lattner its inaugural ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Software Award "for his design and development of the Low Level Virtual Machine", noting that Professor Adve has stated: "Lattner's talent as a compiler architect, together with his programming skills, technical vision, and leadership ability were crucial to the success of LLVM."{{cite web

|title=ACM Group Honors Software Developer of Versatile Compilers Used in Advanced Mobile Devices

|url=http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/2010/sigplan-software-award/view

|work=Press Release

|publisher=Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGPLAN

|date=June 7, 2010

|access-date=June 15, 2010

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100822104038/http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/2010/sigplan-software-award/view

|archive-date=August 22, 2010

|url-status=dead

}}

In April 2013, the ACM awarded Lattner its Software System Award,ACM (2013). Software System Award. Retrieved from {{cite web |url=http://awards.acm.org/homepage.cfm?srt=all&awd=149 |title=ACM Awards |access-date=October 25, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120402203501/http://awards.acm.org/homepage.cfm?srt=all&awd=149 |archive-date=April 2, 2012 }}. which is presented to anyone "recognized for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, reflected in contributions to concepts, in commercial acceptance, or both".

Lattner began developing the Swift programming language in 2010, with the eventual collaboration of many other programmers.{{cite web|url=https://github.com/apple/swift/commit/18844bc65229786b96b89a9fc7739c0fc897905e |title=initial swift test apple/swift@18844bc: GitHub |publisher=Github.com |date=2010-07-17 |access-date=2017-06-27 }}

On 2 June 2014, the WWDC app became the first publicly released app that used Swift.{{cite web |url=http://asciiwwdc.com/2014/sessions/102#t=1906.406 |title=WWDC 2014 Session 102 - Platforms State of the Union - ASCIIwwdc |website=ASCIIwwdc}}

Swift is an open source{{cite web|url=https://developer.apple.com/swift/|title=Swift - Apple Developer|publisher=Apple Inc.}}{{Cite web |url=https://swift.org/ |title=Swift.org |author=Apple Inc |website=Swift.org }} programming language with first-class functions for iOS and macOS development, created by Apple and introduced at Apple's developer conference Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2014.{{cite web |url=https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/02/apple-launches-swift-a-new-programming-language-for-writing-ios-and-os-x-apps/ |title=Apple Launches Swift, A New Programming Language For Writing iOS And OS X Apps |last=Lardinois |first=Frederic |website=techcrunch.com |date=2014-06-02 |access-date=2016-06-18 }}

Swift is designed to coexist{{cite web |url=https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/BuildingCocoaApps/MixandMatch.html |title=Using Swift with Cocoa and Objective-C (Swift 2.2): Swift and Objective-C in the Same Project |website=developer.apple.com |access-date=2016-06-18 }} with Objective-C, the object-oriented programming language formerly preferred by Apple, and to be more resilient against erroneous code. It is built with the LLVM compiler included in Xcode 6.{{cite web |url=https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/WhatsNewXcode/Articles/xcode_6_0.html |title=New Features in Xcode 6 |website=developer.apple.com |access-date=2016-06-18 }}

Lattner announced that the project lead role had been transferred to Ted Kremenek, and that Lattner would leave Apple in January 2017.{{cite mailing list |url=https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/Week-of-Mon-20170109/030063.html |title=[swift-evolution] Update on the Swift Project Lead |first=Chris |last=Lattner |date=2017-01-10 |mailing-list=swift-evolution }}

At Tesla, Lattner served as the Vice President at Autopilot Software from January 30 to June 20, 2017, where he worked on transitioning Autopilot hardware.{{Cite web |title=Chris Lattner's Resumé |url=https://www.nondot.org/sabre/Resume.html |access-date=2023-12-10 |website=www.nondot.org}}{{cite web|first=Jordan |last=Novet |url=https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/20/tesla-hires-prominent-a-i-researcher-as-autopilot-chief-lattner-leaves.html |title=Tesla hires prominent A.I. researcher as Autopilot chief Lattner leaves |publisher=Cnbc.com |date=June 20, 2017 |access-date=June 27, 2017}}

Lattner served as the Senior Director and Distinguished Engineer, TensorFlow Infrastructure and Technologies at Google from August 2017 to January 2020.{{Cite web |date=2017-08-15 |title=Former Apple and Tesla engineer will try to simplify Google's AI efforts |url=https://www.androidauthority.com/chris-lattner-google-ai-793706/ |access-date=2022-09-29 |website=Android Authority |language=en}}

{{Main article|MLIR (software)}}

While working at Google, Lattner was the co-founder of MLIR compiler infrastructure, a compiler that aims to address software fragmentation, improve compilation for heterogeneous hardware, significantly reduce the cost of building domain-specific compilers, and aid in connecting existing compilers together.{{cite journal |last1=Lattner |first1=Chris |title=MLIR Primer: A Compiler Infrastructure for the End of Moore's Law |date=2019 |url=https://research.google/pubs/pub48035/ |access-date=2022-09-30 |last2=Pienaar |first2=Jacques4}}{{cite arXiv |last1=Lattner |first1=Chris |last2=Amini |first2=Mehdi |last3=Bondhugula |first3=Uday |last4=Cohen |first4=Albert |last5=Davis |first5=Andy |last6=Pienaar |first6=Jacques |last7=Riddle |first7=River |last8=Shpeisman |first8=Tatiana |last9=Vasilache |first9=Nicolas |last10=Zinenko |first10=Oleksandr |date=2020-02-29 |title=MLIR: A Compiler Infrastructure for the End of Moore's Law |class=cs.PL |eprint=2002.11054}}

Lattner joined SiFive in January 2020 as the President of Platform Engineering,{{Cite web|url=https://www.sifive.com/blog/with-sifive-we-can-change-the-world|title=With SiFive, We Can Change the World|first=Chris|last=Lattner|website=SiFive Blog|language=en-us|access-date=2020-01-28}}{{Cite web|date=2020-01-27|title=Former Google and Tesla Engineer Chris Lattner to Lead SiFive Platform Engineering Team|url=https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200127005141/en/Former-Google-and-Tesla-Engineer-Chris-Lattner-to-Lead-SiFive-Platform-Engineering-Team|access-date=2020-11-17|website=businesswire.com|language=en}} leading the RISC-V Product and Engineering organizations (everything excluding HR, finance, sales, and customer support).{{Cite web |title=Former Google and Tesla Engineer Chris Lattner to Lead SiFive Platform |url=https://www.sifive.com/press/former-google-and-tesla-engineer-chris-lattner-to-lead |access-date=2022-09-29 |website=SiFive |language=en-us}}{{Cite web |last=Chan |first=Rosalie |title=Chris Lattner, the creator of Apple's Swift, thinks that the smash-hit programming language is going to be a major force in AI development |url=https://www.businessinsider.com/sifive-chris-lattner-apple-swift-machine-learning-2020-2 |access-date=2022-09-29 |website=Business Insider |language=en-US}}

In 2022, Chris Lattner, alongside his co-founders, established Modular AI, a company that is building an Artificial Intelligence (AI) developer platform. Their first products are the Mojo programming language and an inference engine.

Lattner is the current CEO of Modular AI.

Lattner is married to Tanya Lattner, who co-founded the LLVM Foundation with him in 2015 and has been its president and COO ever since.{{Cite web |title=The most powerful female engineers of 2018 - Business Insider |website=Business Insider |url=https://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-powerful-female-engineers-of-2018-2018-4 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200701155355/https://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-powerful-female-engineers-of-2018-2018-4 |url-status=dead |archive-date=2020-07-01 |access-date=2020-07-01 |first1=Julie |last1=Bort |first2=Rachel |last2=Sandler |date=2018-06-21 }}{{cite web |title=Amended and Restated Articles of Incorporation or LLVM Foundation |url=https://foundation.llvm.org/documents/other/CertifiedAR-Articles-of-Incorporation.pdf |date=2015-05-29 |access-date=2017-01-22 |first1=Tanya |last1=Lattner |first2=Chris |last2=Lattner }}

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Category:1978 births

Category:Living people

Category:Grainger College of Engineering alumni

Category:Apple Inc. employees

Category:American computer programmers

Category:American computer scientists

Category:University of Portland alumni

Category:Google employees

Category:Tesla, Inc. people