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Intel Releases Compiler Suite 7.0
Yokaze writes "Intel boosts its Pentium 4 and Itanium 2 and released Version 7 of its compiler suite. On the Windows side, there is the plugin compability to the .NET enviroment, on the Linux side better compability to the GNU compiler, including the Common C++ ABI.
As usual, there are 30-days evaluation copies and for Linux an unsupported non-commercial version after previous registration at the Intel Evaluation Centre. According to the comments published by Intel marketing, Dr. Fons Rademakers, CERN, claims high compability with GCC 3.2 and a performance increase of up to 30% on their code (The ROOT System)."
As usual, there are 30-days evaluation copies and for Linux an unsupported non-commercial version after previous registration at the Intel Evaluation Centre. According to the comments published by Intel marketing, Dr. Fons Rademakers, CERN, claims high compability with GCC 3.2 and a performance increase of up to 30% on their code (The ROOT System)."
I just downloaded the new intel compiler for windows. Tested it with a opengl application I made that runs really slow. The difference between the microsoft c++ compiler and the intel one is about 15%. Not quite 30%, but that probably applies to particular situations...
--- its to bad about the monkey, I kinda liked them
As I understand it, Intels compilers kisk ass. Faster compilations, faster code, smaller code, etc. Not to knok a great product in GCC, but Intels engineers are no slouches.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
What would be really cool would be if a source distribution like Gentoo would support this in addition to gcc. Perhaps they could set it up to first try building with the Intel compiler, and if any errors show up, then try with gcc. It would certainly be interesting to see how well such a system would run.
Just a really quick note that they aim for slightly different goals. GCC is cross-platform etc, and icc isn't.
There are several speculative "requests" for a donation of a license to Debian for this purpose as well as a plea to Intel to release the suite in .deb format instead of just RPM. All in all it was an interesting read.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
How much faster will it be on AMD processors then?
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Is GCC still the only compiler that can build the linux kernel sucessfully?
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gcc in some areas produces slower code than the native compilers.
The fact is that gcc is designed for cross platform compilation and the native compilers are not. The abstract tree approach to gcc's design is somewhat limiting for some arch specific operations, and certainly adds complexity to the compiler development process.
Also, Intel and Sun have spent many millions of dollars on their compilers over the years. You get what you pay for.
However, I would hesistate to use the intel or sun compiler for a project.
Using a platform specific compiler ties your project down to a single architecture, defeating one of the major purposes of C/C++.
A far better approach, if practical, is to isolate the real performance sucking areas (encryption, xor routines, float ops, etc), and write these sections in assembly. Those sections will become platform specific, but will smoke any compiler output.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I use the Intel compiler on Linux. The program I work on when compiled with it runs around 50% faster than gcc. But in general, use whatever suits your particular needs, and just make sure you use standard C/C++ and it'll still be compatible. If you're not sure, check occasionally that it still compiles with other compilers.
Personally theres no way I'd go near assembly. That pretty much guarantees unmaintainability, unreadability, platform-dependance. I don't know how many hours I've had to waste working out what someone else's assembly is doing, converting it to readable C, and then having understood what its doing, optimised the C algorithm to make it faster than the assembler ever was.
I've also used the Intel Compiler's Intrinsics to MMX-optimise my code without a line of assembler. I've tested the code to be just as fast as hand-coded assembly equivalents. I also always create an identical pure-C/C++ function, so its clear exactly what is being done, and can still be compiled on other compilers/platforms. This is necessary in any case so that the code will run on non-mmx (pre P-III) systems.
I'm looking forward to testing the version 7.0 Intel compiler - my experience with version 6.0 was that it made programs faster than gcc but still slower (and a lot bigger) than Visual Studio
...if it's a better product than the alternatives. But hey, I make my living doing this stuff, so maybe I can't afford to prefer OS as a requirement over performance, stability and other such trivia.
Frankly, I couldn't give a **** if it's OS or not, because I'm never going to have time to read all the source and make sure I agree with it. I bet you aren't either. However, rather than assuming that anything closed source will be worse than the OS competition, I'm prepared to take a look at how it performs, evaluate it using meaningful criteria, and base my choices on the results.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
But how is that, in itself, an advantage? If I buy a closed source product, I'm trusting that the developers have spent time looking over it to weed out any gremlins. With an open source product, unless I'm going to do it myself (which is rarely going to be the case) I'm trusting to others to do it then instead, and this time, the others are mostly volunteers in the same position as me already.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how that follows at all.
Are you new around here? ;-)
Seriously, I realise that open source potentially has many advantages. I was just responding to yet another slashbot post by someone who seems to think that OS => better and closed source => worse, and is apparently prepared to rule out what might be an excellent software product just because it's closed source.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.