Date:	Tue, 2 Jan 2001 10:55:56 +0200 (IST)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
X-Sender:	eliz AT is
To:	naisbodo AT enteract DOT com
cc:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: Support for higher end cpus
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On 2 Jan 2001 naisbodo AT enteract DOT com wrote:

> > I think you will find that gcc produces code that's as good as 
> > any code made by a proprietary compiler.
> 
> I think you most definitely will not.

While we could continue arguing about this till Kingdom Come, someone
has already done the footwork of comparing performance of GCC-compiled
code to that of other compilers.  See:

  http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/6552/compila.html

(this URL is mentioned in section 14.1 of the FAQ, btw).

Guess what? GCC does seem to produce code that is as good or better
than proprietary compilers, including MSVC, according to SET's data in
the above page.

> But portability comes at a cost.  Intel can devote 100% of their
> resources to optimizing for a single architecture, and possibly a
> single OS and a single libc.

Interestingly enough, the compiler for Intel's next-generation IA64
CPUs is GCC: Intel hired Cygnus (now a Red Hat company) to develop the
compiler and other development tools for their new chips.  I guess
they wouldn't do that if GCC was paying too heavy a price for being
portable.

Or maybe 100% of Intel's resources is not so much anymore?

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