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."
Many of the optimizations discussed in the article are being implemented in GCC. Actually, some (e.g., SSA) have been in a parallel development branch for quite a while now, where they can make major funky changes and not have to play by the "no breakage" rules that govern the release branches.
Just last week there was a discussion about OpenMP and how it might be implemented in GCC.
A huge optimization that the article mentioned in the intro (but didn't go into in depth, I think) is intraprocedural optimization. That can be hard in languages that don't compile the entire program at once; you really need help from the linker.
it can be built and run on some very unusual and dated pieces of hardware (although, from the recent release notes, it looks like some of the most obscure ones are slipping into oblivion.)
Absolutely. If nobody's using those platforms, and we want to make a change that might effect them in a negative way -- but we can't tell, because we don't have that machine available to test on -- we have two options: make the change and hope it doesn't break, or deliberately mark the platform as "no one cares, so neither do we".
-- You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
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Many of the optimizations discussed in the article are being implemented in GCC. Actually, some (e.g., SSA) have been in a parallel development branch for quite a while now, where they can make major funky changes and not have to play by the "no breakage" rules that govern the release branches.
Just last week there was a discussion about OpenMP and how it might be implemented in GCC.
A huge optimization that the article mentioned in the intro (but didn't go into in depth, I think) is intraprocedural optimization. That can be hard in languages that don't compile the entire program at once; you really need help from the linker.
Absolutely. If nobody's using those platforms, and we want to make a change that might effect them in a negative way -- but we can't tell, because we don't have that machine available to test on -- we have two options: make the change and hope it doesn't break, or deliberately mark the platform as "no one cares, so neither do we".
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)