Nuno Lopes is one of the winners of the 2022 HiPEAC Tech Transfer Awards.

Lopes — a Researcher at the High Performance Computing Architectures and Systems (HPCAS) Research Area — was awarded this distinction for Alive2, an automatic compiler verification tool. On winning the award, Lopes commented “The effort that goes from publishing a scientific article to putting a tool in the hands of engineers so that they can use it on a daily basis is huge. We made that effort with our work in the area of ​​compiler verification [by developing] the first and only translation validation tool for an industrial compiler (LLVM).”

Now on its eighth edition, the HiPEAC Technology Transfer Awards seek to celebrate disruptive technologies reaching the market. “Obviously, it is very nice to receive this award in recognition of our scientific work and technology transfer. LLVM itself is used by dozens of companies to compile C++, Swift, Rust, etc. We all use code produced by LLVM on a daily basis without even knowing it. Alive2 (our tool) is also used by most companies that develop LLVM. We are very happy to be able to contribute to making the software ecosystem a little more secure,” Lopes concluded.

A major European network for computer architecture and compilation researchers, HiPEAC (High Performance Embedded Architecture and Compilation) is currently the biggest of its kind in Europe, counting with over 2,000 specialists amongst its ranks.