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New Intel Compiler Released

Posted by Hemos on from the test-it-out dept.

swsnyder writes "A new toy to play with: new Intel compiler (v7.0) available for download at Intel's site. The Windows version is a time limited eval version, but the Linux version is free for non-commercial use. This version is claimed to be even more GCC-compatible that the last version, though I haven't verified this yet."

2 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. Re:compatible? by LizardKing · · Score: 4, Informative

    shouldn't it be more standards compliant

    Nope, being more compatible with gcc implies it supports more gcc extensions. That's one reason why the Linux kernel used to break so much between gcc versions, as gcc is chock full of neat and not so neat extensions to the C language.

    Chris

  2. Re:GCC Compatable? by RupW · · Score: 2, Informative

    I assume that there's some good reason(s) to run the intel compiler vs gcc. I would guess that it involves specific optimizations for Intel chip(set)s. Am I wrong? Is there more(or less) to it than that?

    Yeah, that's about it. GCC continues to produce mediocre code for the P4 and Itanium. (The latter's very significant - some reports of 50% slower.) There are efforts to fix this but Intel has a significant lead.

    The other advantage is vectorization - Intel's compiler makes much better use of MMX/SSE/SSE2 than GCC does. I don't know how ICC compares to VectorC but I'd guess they'd have the edge back by now.