Posted by
michael
on from the better-but-more-expensive dept.
deadfx writes "Linux Journal is carrying an article authored by members of the Intel Compiler Lab examining specific optimizations employed by the compiler that allowed it to beat the gcc compiler on several benchmarks."
It's only high performance on 4 gigabytes of RAM or less. Then you're back into segmentation and other hackery, just like in the "good old days" of MS-DOS. You young 'uns, don't know how good you have it. In my day, your code had to fit inside 64k segements, and so did your data. No arrays bigger than 65533 bytes, and you had to do "far" jumps to code in other segments. Yes, addresses were 20 bits, but you had to make them up with two 16-bit chunks. So, you needed 32 bits of storage to address 1 megabyte of RAM. Don't get me started on TSRs...
Slashdot Mirror
I hope the fine folks of GCC don't trade one inch of platform independance for a mile of "performance" on an Intel chip.
The best wat to get better performance out of GCC is to recopile your program - targeted to PowerPC, Alpha, Mips or hell... AMD.
Screwing with GCC to get better x86 performance is like puting a trubo on a Honda Civic - just buy the damn Corvette.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.