[rescue] Re: Being jobless

Tue Jul 29 17:32:05 CDT 2003

On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 02:02:49PM -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:

> > The binaries on my AMD Athlon system are now faster and smaller, so I'm
> > having a hard time complaining right now.
> 
> That -is- my complaint.  The ONLY platform on which GCC has seen
> significant improvement is x86.  

Oh, I agree, but I thought the original sentiment was that it wasn't
optimized for *any* platform.

> Yeah, sure, they finally have 64-bit SPARC support and 64-bit MIPS
> support but the code generated for those platforms is still pessimized
> crap.

Again, I thought the comment was about GNU C not being a good compiler.

The problem with the other CPUs is mostly due to not near as many people
working on the back-ends for those other architectures.

The only way to solve that problem is to get people working on it.

> Also, I fully realize that some of that is due to the current popularity
> that Linux/x86 enjoys, but all the world is not a Linux/x86 system.  

Is this really a GNU compiler problem though?  I see this with compilers
and systems from DEC, Sun, and SGI too.

> In fact, I've not used such a system in nearly two years.  By that
> token, GCC isn't the right compiler for me, and people who code
> towards GCC extensions don't make life particularly easy for me.

People who code toward any compiler's extensions cause headaches.  I
had a hell of a time porting a bunch of code that would only work on a
64-bit DEC Alpha, using a specific DEC C compiler with certain bugs.

> > Oh, and Intel doesn't support AMD instruction sets, or any other
> > processor platform.
> 
> I'm shocked, really.  I'd have expected it to support AXP and UltraSPARC
> II at the very least.  How dare Intel only support their own chips!

You missed the point.  I don't really care what Intel does, I'm just
pointing out another reason why their compiler isn't being used.  A
lot of people use AMD, and using a compiler that doesn't support
it as well might not be an option for them.

I'm talking about supporting what is now a common x86 ISA.  Wether they
like it or not, 3DNow! is part of the Intel landscape.

This is far different from supporting another CPU entirely.

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