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IBM Releases XL compilers for Mac OS X

Posted by pudge on from the faster-you-say dept.

Visigothe writes "IBM released their XL Fortran Compiler and XL C/C++ Compiler for OS X. The compiler is binary compatible with GCC 3.3, and has multiple levels of optimization, creating binaries that are much faster than their GCC-compiled counterparts." No prices are noted, and the planned availability date is January 16.

8 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Benchmarks by melquiades · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Has anybody seen any useful benchmarks of compiler output comparing XL and GCC on PowerPC?

    That would be interesting to see.

  2. Supports G4 and G5, but not G3 by Laplace · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's great that IBMs compiler produces faster code that is compatible with gcc, however it appears that it won't generate code that runs on G3 machines. This means if you want to build apps with it you either need to write code that builds with two compilers or not support any G3 machines.

    As a very happy G3 user I will be sad when I'm forced to upgrade.

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  3. FASTER OS X? by zulux · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What does Apple use to compile OS X - and if IBM get the Objective C sections woking properly, could Apple use the IBM comiper to get OS X to run faster?

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    1. Re:FASTER OS X? by addaon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      OS X and all Apple software for OS X that I know of (maybe not including some high-end stuff, I just don't know for sure) is indeed built with GCC.

      Porting an operating system to a different compiler is a pain in the neck, and most OS's use compiler-specific tricks to deal with low-level details. Also, most of Apple's higher-level software is in Objective C, and as of now only GCC really supports Obj C well on the mac.

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    2. Re:FASTER OS X? by Visigothe · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Apple currently uses GCC to build Panther. As XL is much faster in 95% of the situations, I would imagine that Apple would transition to XL once the Obj-C portions of the compiler were a bit more mature. [The public beta of XLC didn't have any Obj-C support]

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    3. Re:FASTER OS X? by rmlane · · Score: 5, Interesting
      As mentioned by others, the majority of OS X is compiled by GCC.

      The exception is Quicktime, which uses (and has used since well before OS X) a older, custom version of the IBM compilers. I believe, but am not 100% sure, that Quicktime has always used the IBM compilers on PowerPC CPUs.

      This is very good news for Apple's science users, one of the real problems pushing Mac boxes into some markets has been the lack of a really good Fortran compiler. The performance boost for C/C++ code will also be appreciated.

      As for a wholesale transition of OS X to the IBM compilers: next to no chance. QA of the transition would take far too long and absorb resources that could be better used on other improvements. It would also cause problems with the Open Source versions of Darwin, so expect the vast majority of OS X to remain GCC compiled.

      That being said, I would expect that certain chunks will be transitioned, where it makes sense. The output of the IBM compilers is binary compatible with GCC, so you can recompile (and re-QA) chunks of the OS where you'll get a major improvment.

      Quartz Extreme, CoreFoundation and AppKit spring to mind, but don't expect this to happen in 10.3 or 10.4, more like 10.5 or 11.0.

  4. Autovectorisation ? by Jesrad · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Weren't these compilers supposed to bring automatic conversion of multiple 32bits arithmetic operations into Altivec-accelerated code ?

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  5. Fortran Motives by fm6 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    From what I've heard, software companies hate selling Fortran compilers. You'll notice that Microsoft no longer has one. Not enough people use the language to make it worth the development and support costs.

    So why are you still able to buy Fortran compilers? Because the people who use the language tend to be engineers (the physical kind) and scientists, and thus spend a lot of money on high-end computers. No Fortran compiler, not fat contracts for your Starfire and Origin boxes. Which is why Sun and SGI both sell Fortran. And whose the leading vendor of Fortran for the Itanium? Good guess.

    So is IBM trying to help Apple sell more Macs? Probably not. They'd make a little money from the extra CPU sales, but not enough to justify something like this. More likely they have this compiler to help them sell more high-performance PPC systems. As long as they have it, not that much extra effort to port it to the Mac.