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Intel Software Development Products for OSX
rgraham writes "Intel has released a number of development tools for OSX, including a C++ and Fortran compiler. I for one would be interested to see some benchmarks of code compiled using these tools and Apple's own Xcode."
Fortan is big in the modeling world, still. Oddly enough for a language that is that old, gives clout in science and engineering worlds.
The C++ is nice but since most osx programs are written on objective c, probably of little use.
Those math libraries look like the ticket though. Everone likes highly optimized math libraries.
The main reason why OS X is so much faster is that the powerbook so far used the G4 processor, which is actually a rather old processor. Given that the G4 is already out there for so long, the compilers for G4 are quite well optimized, I'd expect.
Actually, the biggest single hardware reason isn't the processor but the bus speed. For example, my 9-month old (snif!) PowerBook 15" running at 1.67 Mhz on a 167 MHz (10:1) bus. The competative 1.67Mhz model of new MacBookPros have a 667 MHz bus = a shade under 4x speed difference. Then you can add in the better Intel-optimized compilers, GCC libraries, etc, etc...
>Its a shame that most of the new OS X dev work is done using Objective-C and not C++
why is this a shame? They're using a language that actually makes sense, rather than one that's just a bunch of ideas cobbled together on top of C, and you think this is a shame? or is it just that you didn't have an Objective C class when you went to devry*, so you don't know anything about it?
Yes, Intel's compiler is faster on intel hardware than gcc. this is true in every os that runs on intel hardware... but makes almost no difference in the real world, except for processor intensive apps ( mp3 ripping, dvd encoding, etc ). so, for 99 % of the code written for any os, it just makes more sense to use a portable compiler, and a good language.
* before you flame me on this, they didn't have an objective c class when I went there either. It's not that you suck, just that devry does.
Sitting Walrus Blog
Thats a poor test. This particular feature has been with C++ for a while and most C vendors are also C++ vendors. All they had to do is copy it across to C. A good test whould be a C feature which is _NOT_ a C++ feature.
BTW: The place where most so called C99 compiler fail are variant arrays - A feature even ALGOL 60 had (40 years ago) - and it's decendants like Ada and ISO-Pascal still have today. But C vendors can't get it right or worse don't even try.
Martin