Liu Zhen, a third-year undergraduate student in Artificial Intelligence at the School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Xiamen University Malaysia (XMUM), won the National Third Prize in the Compiler Implementation Track (RISC-V) at the 2026 China National University Student Computer System Capability Competition – Compiler System Design Contest.

Liu Zhen with fellow winners at the national finals at Nankai University

The national finals were held in August at Nankai University in Tianjin, China, where Liu competed as a solo participant under the team name "Supportless Vectorization Machine". He was advised by Dr. Li Jing, Assistant Professor at XMUM’s School of Computing and Data Science, who was also recognised with the Outstanding Instructor Award.

For the competition, Liu developed a compiler for a subset of the C programming language targeting the RISC-V architecture. The project covered frontend analysis, intermediate representation and target code generation, as well as optimisation passes and register allocation.

The compiler was evaluated through functional correctness and performance benchmarks during the preliminary and final rounds of the competition.

Liu Zhen's certificate for the National Third Prize in the Compiler Implementation Track (RISC-V)

The contest is organised by the China National Research Association of Computer Education in Higher Education, the System Capability Cultivation Research Expert Group and the initiating universities of the System Capability Cultivation Research Project. It is hosted by the College of Computer Science at Nankai University, with support from Huawei Technologies and other partners.

The competition aims to promote system-level design, analysis, optimisation and engineering skills among university students and support the development of talent in compiler and system software.

Certificate of the Outstanding Instructor Award presented to Dr. Li Jing