Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 12:03:46 -0600 (CST) From: Mike Silbersack <silby@silby.com> To: Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com> Cc: Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu>, <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Machines are getting too damn fast Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.31.0103061157280.11779-100000@achilles.silby.com> In-Reply-To: <200103061741.f26Hf3N55355@earth.backplane.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Matt Dillon wrote: > My understanding is that Intel focused on FP performance in the P4, > and that it is very, very good at it. I dunno how to test it though. From the benchmarks tom's hardware / others did, I got the impression that SSE2 performance is awesome, but x87 FPU operations aren't really improved, so the Athlon still has the advantage there. > GCC generally does not produce very good code, but I would expect that > it would get reasonably close in regards to FP because Intel's FP > instruction set is a good fit with it. > > -Matt I'm quite confused about Intel's strategy wrt that compiler. Every time someone does a benchmark showing Intel's newest processor getting beat at something, they send code compiled with it to the benchmarker. However, they haven't even attempted to make it a popular compiler. Everything I've seen/heard indicates that msvc and gcc are all that gets really used on x86. My only guess is that part of the company wants to have everyone use it to get optimal performance out of intel processors, while the other half wants people to be forced to buy faster processors. This would explain why it's still sold, but in such a way that nobody will really buy it. (The reason I mention this is because someone was talking about trying to compile the kernel with sun's CC. Maybe rigging intel's compiler to do so would be fruitful.) Mike "Silby" Silbersack To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.31.0103061157280.11779-100000>