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GNU GCC Vs Sun's Compiler on a SPARC

Posted by timothy on from the real-numbers dept.

JigSaw writes "When doing research for his evaluation of Solaris 9 on his Ultra 5, Tony Bourke kept running into the same comment online over and over again: Sun's C compiler produces much faster code than GCC does. However, he couldn't find one set of benchmarks to back this up and so he did his own."

1 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. "clear" winner??? by ajagci · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, the benchmarks show maybe a 10-15% difference in favor of Sun's compiler. Does that Sun's compiler a "clear winner"? I think not.

    First of all, it's far from clear that those differences are real. You can get much bigger differences from just changes in caching behavior, even with the same compiler.

    Then, there is the question of whether Sun's compiler is actually correct. A lot of commercial compilers intentionally skirt or break the letter of the ANSI standards once you start enabling optimizations. GNU C/C++ is usually more careful.

    Finally, you have to ask whether it matters. So, Sun's overpriced machines using their overpriced compilers run a bit faster than their overpriced machines using a free compiler. So what? If you want bang for the buck, or even just maximum bang, why in the world would you buy a Sun these days anyway?