> Ah, well here is a thought that might send you away to think because  
> the PC folks who are complain about the G5 SPEC marks say the GCC  
> compiler creates crummy code on intel, versus say some other  
> compiler... so any usage of GCC on intel is flawed...

Well, it depends on what you're doing. I found that for "real life use" in
Squeak GCC beats any other compiler (assuming you supply proper gnuification
of course). Given that I only care about the bottom line I don't care very
much about what people say as long as I can prove them wrong ;-) 

After all, if they got a bunch of primitives that run significantly faster
using a different compiler they're absolutely free to use that compiler for
it. But for the main interpreter loop I have yet to find anything that gets
even close to GCC (as measured by both tinyBenchmarks and macroBenchmarks).
MSVC is pretty good (Borland-C or whatever it's called today used to be a
total mess) but looses due to the lack of threaded dispatch and buying the
Intel C compiler seems like a waste of money to me all pros and cons
considered (if someone out there has it I'd be interested in seeing if there
are any improvements).

Cheers,
  - Andreaas