Sander De Smalen
Principal Software Engineer at Arm
England, United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolSander De Smalen is a Principal Software Engineer based in the UK with eight years of deep compiler and systems experience, specializing in C/C++, LLVM/CoSy frameworks, SIMD vectorization and AArch64 optimizations. At Arm he progressed from Senior Compiler Engineer to Principal, driving backend compiler improvements such as register coalescer optimizations and precise debug-info handling for complex C features like VLA. His background spans embedded systems, ISO-26262 qualification, multicore parallelism and DSP-targeted compiler passes, augmented by practical work in computer vision and web technologies. An active contributor to the LLVM project (notably clang and llvm-project) he combines low-level assembly insight with pragmatic tooling and process improvements cultivated earlier in hybrid engineering/co‑ordination roles. Colleagues know him for bridging compiler research and production toolchains while also improving developer workflows through integrations and automation.
8 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
Master of Science (MS) Embedded Systems, Master of Science (MS) Embedded Systems at Delft University of Technology
Dutch, English
Github Skills (20)
debugging10
debug10
llvm10
c1110
c1710
compiler-compiler10
cplus10
compiler-optimization10
compiler10
cpp10
assembly9
c-language9
allocation9
assemble9
assembler9
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
llvm/llvm-project
Mar 2022 - Jan 2023
The LLVM Project is a collection of modular and reusable compiler and toolchain technologies.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Compiler Engineer
Back-end Developer & Compiler EngineerContributions:704 reviews, 4 commits, 181 PRs in 10 months
Contributions summary:Sander contributed significantly to the LLVM project, focusing on enhancements and optimizations within the AArch64 architecture. Their work involved implementing a new pass to optimize the register coalescer by removing COALESCER_BARRIER nodes. This pass aimed to improve code generation for specific instructions, potentially related to SME (Scalable Matrix Extension) and involved modifications to test files and compiler-rt code. The user was also involved in unifying lowering logic for fixed-length vectors and other code cleanups.
compilerstechnologiesclangsubmittoolchain
llvm-mirror/clang
Feb 2018 - Jul 2019
Mirror kept for legacy. Moved to https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:7 commits in 1 year 6 months
Contributions summary:Sander primarily contributed to the Clang compiler, focusing on debugging and enhancing the compiler's handling of C99 Variable Length Array (VLA) types. Their work involved modifying the code generation and debug information emission processes to correctly represent and debug VLA dimensions. They also addressed a build issue related to g++-4.8 and made further refinements related to debug info generation and register usage in AArch64. The user's contributions directly improve the compiler's ability to handle specific C language features and generate accurate debug information.
keptwindowsllvmcc-plus-plus
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