Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Intel Releases V6.0 Compiler Suite

Posted by timothy on from the smooshing-the-bits-around dept.

Yokaze writes: "Intels C++ and Fortran compilers are now available for Windows and Linux. The compiler for Linux provides higher compatibility with the GNU C-compiler including compability to the upcoming GCC-3.1 C++-ABI (binary compability) and support for several GNUisms in the syntax (PDF). To quote Intel: 'The 6.0 release of the Intel C++ compiler has improved support for the GNU C language extensions and is now able to build the Linux kernel with minor work arounds for both the IA-32 and Itanium architectures.' Little reminder: Running such a kernel is, of course, not supported by the kernel developers. Evaluation copies are available for download, but requires previous registration."

3 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Performance? by spencerogden · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think last time the Intel compiler was discussed it offered significant performance benefits ( read more than 10% ) on both Intel and AMD chips.

    --

    Spencer Ogden

  2. Re:Performance? by tjwhaynes · · Score: 4, Informative

    So that begs the question: apart from issues of reliability, stability, do the Intel compilers make a Linux system perform better or worse than one built with gcc?

    The correct answer to that question is: It depends

    I've made use of the new Intel compiler on some Linux projects. Initial results showed that it had about the same performance as gcc. But at this point we know a lot about the gcc compiler tuning and not a lot about the characteristics of the Intel compiler, so only time will tell how much performance can be (safetly) wrung out of the Intel compiler.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

    --
    Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
  3. Re:Pretty lame overall. by bstrahm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Problem is that GCC's top goal isn't maximum performance, it is maximum portability. There are a lot of things you can do if you only have to target one architecture (and trust me Intel is only targetting one architecture) rather than the several dozen that GCC targets...

    This said there is a need for both, ultimate portability and ultimate performance. The intel compilers have been delivering ultimate performance on their architecture for years, look at the difference 10 years ago between the MS compiler (internally developed) and the Watcom compiler (Intel License) guess who's compiler produced significantly faster executables...