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Date:      Sun, 30 Sep 2001 14:06:32 -0700
From:      "Charles Burns" <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com>
To:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   GCC 3.0 terrible for Athlon
Message-ID:  <F103TXLaWScrXhsL6qO0000bd60@hotmail.com>

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This may be old news, but
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~rwhaley/ATLAS/gcc30.html
describes some serious problems that GCC 3.0 has when using Athlon 
processors. Here's a clip:

---------------
From the experiments described below, I think it is highly probable that 
there are two significant problems with gcc 3.0 on x86:

The 3.0 fetch scheduler is optimized for Pentiums, to the very great 
detriment of Athlons. The scheduling algorithm used in the 2.9x series is 
much better for Athlons (2.96-80 has this problem as well). For ATLAS's 
kernel on Athlons, this problem causes an almost 50% drop in performance.
3.0's fpu stack handling is inferior to 2.9x's on all x86 platforms (2.96-80 
does not have this problem, if you turn up optimization over that required 
in earlier releases). For ATLAS's kernel on any x86 (actually, confirmed for 
PIII & Athlon only), this problem causes a roughly 10% drop in performance.
----------------

Ouch! The performace figures shouldn't bee too different for BSD.

Charles Burns

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