Philippe Marschall wrote:
> 2008/9/27 Joshua Gargus <schwa at fastmail.us>:
>   
>> 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.
>>     
>
> That's funny because AMD accuses Intel of checking for CPUID:
>
> http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/DownloadableAssets/AMD-Intel_Full_Complaint.pdf
>
> page 40 and 41
>   

Thanks for the link, I forgot about those allegations.  Now that I have
the search term "amd cpuid intel compiler", I find plenty of instances
of people claiming to have independently discovered CPUID checks in code
generated by ICC.

Given some of the things I've read (ICC generating ridiculously slow
memcpys for AMD), I wonder how ICC can still be competitive with top
compilers in HPC benchmarks like:
http://www.cse.scitech.ac.uk/disco/Benchmarks/Opteron_compilers.pdf

It is easier to find anecdotes on less-official-looking pages like the
following...
http://www.altechnative.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.6
... where ICC does well.

Nevertheless, even though ICC does well on AMD, it could do better
without the CPUID checks, and I hope that Intel had to pay AMD a lot of
money for their actions.  What was the result of AMD's litigation?

Cheers,
Josh

> Cheers
> Philippe
>
>   

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20080927/786d8442/attachment.htm