2008/9/27 Joshua Gargus schwa@fastmail.us:
Philippe Marschall wrote:
2008/9/26, Jason Johnson jason.johnson.081@gmail.com:
On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 9:15 PM, Igor Stasenko siguctua@gmail.com wrote:
2008/9/25 Chris Kassopulo ckasso@sprynet.com:
http://www.lesser-software.com/en/content/products/lswvst/lswvst.htm
It would be nice to look at it (LSWV). So many cool features. Too bad its proprietary. :(
-- Best regards, Igor Stasenko AKA sig.
Is the cost prohibitive? Dolphin wasn't free, but it was really cheap and a quality product. Keep in mind that while programming languages have been largely "commoditized" the best implementations of many languages still cost money. E.g. you want the best C compiler? It's not GCC. Buy the Intel compiler and watch your code run twice as fast.
Let me preface this by saying that I support free software, and use it in preference to proprietary software when possible. However, I disagree with much of what you say.
If you define best best as "longest bar in some benchmark".
I define best as "producing the best performance for the program that I am interested in compiling".
Intel doesn't manage to charge serious money for their compiler because it is better on some synthetic benchmark but worse in the real world. Maybe GCC has mostly caught up with 4.3, but there's no doubt that ICC has traditionally generated faster code. I don't have extensive/varied personal experience with ICC, but if you compile Squeak with it on Intel, you'll see a 20% speed-up on macro benchmarks.
If you want to run your software only on Intel chips, no AMD, no Motorola, no Sun, no ....
First, it's simply not true that Intel's compiler doesn't work for AMD. After surfing around for 15min or so, I learned:
- at various times in the past, AMD chose ICC as the compiler they used to
generate SPEC benchmarks.
- there are numerous personal accounts where ICC generates the fastest code
for AMD for their pet application.
Typically, Intel CPUs have a higher percentage improvement by using ICC instead of GCC, but AMD CPUs also benefit.
That's funny because AMD accuses Intel of checking for CPUID:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/DownloadableAssets/AMD-Intel_Fu...
page 40 and 41
Cheers Philippe