Intel Releases Compiler Suite 7.0 47
Yokaze writes "Intel boosts its Pentium 4 and Itanium 2 and released Version 7 of its compiler suite. On the Windows side, there is the plugin compability to the .NET enviroment, on the Linux side better compability to the GNU compiler, including the Common C++ ABI.
As usual, there are 30-days evaluation copies and for Linux an unsupported non-commercial version after previous registration at the Intel Evaluation Centre. According to the comments published by Intel marketing, Dr. Fons Rademakers, CERN, claims high compability with GCC 3.2 and a performance increase of up to 30% on their code (The ROOT System)."
As usual, there are 30-days evaluation copies and for Linux an unsupported non-commercial version after previous registration at the Intel Evaluation Centre. According to the comments published by Intel marketing, Dr. Fons Rademakers, CERN, claims high compability with GCC 3.2 and a performance increase of up to 30% on their code (The ROOT System)."
Doubtful (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Doubtful (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Doubtful (Score:2)
Re:Doubtful (Score:1)
Re:Doubtful (Score:1)
Re:Doubtful (Score:1)
Uhm, it's not a Redhat release, don't be so pessimistic
Re:Doubtful (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is that gcc is designed for cross platform compilation and the native compilers are not. The abstract tree approach to gcc's design is somewhat limiting for some arch specific operations, and certainly adds complexity to the compiler development process.
Also, Intel and Sun have spent many millions of dollars on their compilers over the years. You get what you pay for.
However, I would hesistate to use the intel or sun compiler for a project.
Using a platform specific compiler ties your project down to a single architecture, defeating one of the major purposes of C/C++.
A far better approach, if practical, is to isolate the real performance sucking areas (encryption, xor routines, float ops, etc), and write these sections in assembly. Those sections will become platform specific, but will smoke any compiler output.
Re:Doubtful (Score:2, Insightful)
I use the Intel compiler on Linux. The program I work on when compiled with it runs around 50% faster than gcc. But in general, use whatever suits your particular needs, and just make sure you use standard C/C++ and it'll still be compatible. If you're not sure, check occasionally that it still compiles with other compilers.
Personally theres no way I'd go near assembly. That pretty much guarantees unmaintainability, unreadability, platform-dependance. I don't know how many hours I've had to waste working out what someone else's assembly is doing, converting it to readable C, and then having understood what its doing, optimised the C algorithm to make it faster than the assembler ever was.
I've also used the Intel Compiler's Intrinsics to MMX-optimise my code without a line of assembler. I've tested the code to be just as fast as hand-coded assembly equivalents. I also always create an identical pure-C/C++ function, so its clear exactly what is being done, and can still be compiled on other compilers/platforms. This is necessary in any case so that the code will run on non-mmx (pre P-III) systems.
I'm looking forward to testing the version 7.0 Intel compiler - my experience with version 6.0 was that it made programs faster than gcc but still slower (and a lot bigger) than Visual Studio
Well... (Score:3, Informative)
Gentoo support? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Gentoo support? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Gentoo support? (Score:2)
Re:Gentoo support? (Score:4, Informative)
Gentoo has a package for icc, as well as gcc. BTW they had a working autobuild for gcc 3.2.1 two days before the slashdot announcement of the release
Re:Gentoo support? (Score:2)
Re:I would like to use it... (Score:2)
...if it's a better product than the alternatives. But hey, I make my living doing this stuff, so maybe I can't afford to prefer OS as a requirement over performance, stability and other such trivia.
Frankly, I couldn't give a **** if it's OS or not, because I'm never going to have time to read all the source and make sure I agree with it. I bet you aren't either. However, rather than assuming that anything closed source will be worse than the OS competition, I'm prepared to take a look at how it performs, evaluate it using meaningful criteria, and base my choices on the results.
Re:I would like to use it... (Score:1)
The advantage of open source is not only that you can read the code, but that anybody can. Because of this, you can be somewhat more sure that development will continue for at least as long as you need it.
I don't think that open source proponents automatically assume that a closed source alternative is worse in every way. They prefer open source for other reasons (one of them being the one stated above). I think that it is well known and accepted that GCC doesn't perform as well as the Intel or Microsoft compilers on the X86 architecture so nobody cares if you are "prepared to take a look at how it performs, [blah, blah, textbook definition of performance analysis, blah]".
Re:I would like to use it... (Score:2)
But how is that, in itself, an advantage? If I buy a closed source product, I'm trusting that the developers have spent time looking over it to weed out any gremlins. With an open source product, unless I'm going to do it myself (which is rarely going to be the case) I'm trusting to others to do it then instead, and this time, the others are mostly volunteers in the same position as me already.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how that follows at all.
Are you new around here? ;-)
Seriously, I realise that open source potentially has many advantages. I was just responding to yet another slashbot post by someone who seems to think that OS => better and closed source => worse, and is apparently prepared to rule out what might be an excellent software product just because it's closed source.
is this an article or an ad? (Score:1, Flamebait)
So slashdot runs articles for intel development tools and advertisements for intel development tools.
At the same time.
Cmdr Taco - how do you like being a whore?
How stable is the ABI? (Score:1)
Re:How stable is the ABI? (Score:1)
But, there will probably be updates to the abi in the future, as it has not yet been extensively tested in the real world.
Re:How stable is the ABI? (Score:1)
Anyway, the real world test will be when people try to actually link C++ libaries produced by compilers from different companies.
Marcel
Intel's Linux compiler with Debian (Score:5, Interesting)
There are several speculative "requests" for a donation of a license to Debian for this purpose as well as a plea to Intel to release the suite in .deb format instead of just RPM. All in all it was an interesting read.
AMD (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:AMD (Score:2, Funny)
Re:AMD (Score:1)
Building the kernel with it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Building the kernel with it (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Building the kernel with it (Score:2)
Er, in all fairness the question had little to do with performance. He simply asked if the Linux kernel even *could* be compiled with anything but GCC. I believe the answer is still a very flat "no."
FreeBSD kernel compile with icc (Score:1, Informative)
Just for peoples reference, I came across these patches for the FreeBSD kernel (LINT) to get it going with icc.
I haven't tried them yet but I would love to see the whole of FreeBSD compiled with icc. The speed increase would be very cool.
icc_20020721.diff [leidinger.net]
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