From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Andrew To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] fast compilers Message-ID: <20030405001449.GA24682@thefrayedknot.armory.com> References: <20030404230234.GA24395@thefrayedknot.armory.com> <20030404230724.GA43336@mero.morphisms.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20030404230724.GA43336@mero.morphisms.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 16:14:49 -0800 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 8b034d64-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 On Fri, Apr 04, 2003 at 06:07:24PM -0500, jkw@eecs.harvard.edu wrote: > On Fri, Apr 04, 2003 at 03:02:34PM -0800, Andrew wrote: > > > I dont think gcc 3.2.1 is twice as slow as 2.95 (3.2.2 has been released > > as a side note). I will not deny that it seems a bit slower than 2.95 > > but not to any very noticable degree. It is worth pointing out that > > That's because gcc was slow as a dog to begin with ;-) > > > were added (pentium4 and athlon to name a few). I think the big push > > towards 3.x was to add support for newer architectures. They've also > > hit the stumbling block of complexity. It seems to be a rule that the > > bigger and more complex programs get the speed at which they will run > > becomes increasingly slower. There are tons of features in gcc, omit the > > The Intel folks have managed to produce an ia32 compiler > that is much faster than gcc and yet much more interested > in highly optimized code than the Plan 9 cc, so I'm not sure > I buy this argument. :-/ > Im not saying specifically that gcc is slow _because_ it has it makes optmized code, i actually never said it made optimized code, although it claims to, and seems to do fairly well in most cases. All i said was that gcc has tons of features. I was also saying that bigger software seems to degrade in performance (therefore smaller software is the way to go, ie plan9, which is great in that respect afaik). I can cite plenty of examples of large software projects that are unreasonably bulky and slow if you'd like... mozilla, xfree86, glibc...all much too large and far too slow.