Philippe Marschall wrote:
> 2008/9/26, Jason Johnson <jason.johnson.081 at gmail.com>:
>   
>> On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 9:15 PM, Igor Stasenko <siguctua at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> 2008/9/25 Chris Kassopulo <ckasso at 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.

Also, many applications don't target PowerPC, Sparc, or ARM.  For
desktop apps, x86 is the name of the game.  I don't feel limited by
using an x86-only compiler, especially since I can write my code to
compile with a different compiler for other platforms.

> If you want to put up with all kinds of trouble and
> issues compiling software that was written with GCC in mind like all
> the GNU/Linux software. 

That's an interesting angle.  Many Free software lovers would consider
code that uses specific features of Microsoft's C compiler to be
broken.  I generally agree with them; unless there is a good reason for
it (and there sometimes is, just as it sometimes makes sense to write
x86 assembly), compiler-specific code is a bug.  Why should it be any
different for GNU-specific code?

To me, it seems like FUD to disparage a compiler for inability to
compile non-standard code.

> Maybe even Squeak thanks to gnuify. 

No, gnuify transforms the code to make it run faster on GCC, but if you
don't apply gnuify, it will compile fine with other compilers.

BTW, Windows Squeak VMs are still built using GCC 2.9.5 becuase it
produces faster code than 4.x (don't know if 4.3 has been tried).  The
moral: if you care about performance, run your own benchmarks.  Then,
you can balance observed performance against other factors like cost,
portability, free-software ideology, etc.

Cheers,
Josh


> Yeah, then
> ICC might be the "best".
>
> Cheers
> Philippe
>
>   

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