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Benchmarking Intel C++ 6.0 to GNU g++ 3.0.4

Posted by timothy on from the religious-fervor dept.

axehind writes: "Here is a good article detailing a benchmark [comparison] between the two compilers. The results are very interesting."

3 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Kudos to GCC by zulux · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Given that GCC is cross-platform to the extreme, I'm verry impressed with GCC ability to hold up well to Intel's finest. Plus GCC has diferent front-ends for other languages, it gets even more impressive.

    Aside:
    Personally, for initial developemnt of cross platform stuff, I actually use Borland's C++ Builder compiler and linker. It produces slow code, but it's amazingly fast at compiling and linking. The debug and compile cycle goes so much faster - that I get more work done faster than with Emacs and GCC. After the code runs well on Windows - I move on to testing with GCC on other platforms.

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  2. Why use -fast-math? by V.+Mole · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While there are some uses for it, I doubt that any serious floating-point codes would use "fast-math" (shorthand for "not-quite-right-math"). IEEE math is not perfect, but it allows one to estimate and control error accumulation reliably. The correct response to discovering that ICC defaults to fast-math is not to enable it in GCC, but disable it in ICC.

    I've no idea whether it change the relative result of the benchmarks, but at least they'd be representative of actual use. (Or run them both ways, actually, to see which compiler is "cheating" more :-)).

  3. Official Addendum by ChaoticCoyote · · Score: 5, Informative

    At the least the site stayed running with the spike in hits...

    I'm putting together some "large" benchmarks for the "rematch" when gcc 3.1 hits reality next week. The problem with most "real world" programs is that they're interactive or I/O bound, masking the code generator's abilities.

    I need to be clear about one thing: Anyone who tosses out gcc over this review is a fool. Intel C++ is a good product for very specific applications, but it does not replace gcc. All the benchmarks show is that Intel C++ can provide a performance boost for certain classes of computationally-bound programs. For some of my scientific work, Intel kicks ass in comparison to gcc... for some other projects, gcc comes out on top. What's important is choice and competition, which fuel evolution...

    I urge people to read the entire article before making any assumptions about my goals or the results.

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