Chris Lattner (born 1978) is an American software developer, best known as the primary author of the LLVM project and related projects, such as the clang compiler and the Swift programming language. He currently works at Apple Inc. as the Director of the Developer Tools department, leading the Xcode, Instruments and compiler teams.

Background

Lattner studied Computer Science at the University of Portland, Oregon, graduating in 2000. While in Oregon, he worked as an operating systems developer, enhancing Sequent Computer Systems's DYNIX/ptx. He is married to compiler engineer Tanya Lattner, who is as of 2015 president of the LLVM Foundation.

LLVM

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 the implementation of LLVM, an innovative infrastructure for optimizing compilers, which was the subject of his 2002 M.Sc. thesis. He completed a Ph.D. in 2005, researching new techniques for optimizing pointer-intensive programs and adding them to LLVM.