GCC code generation sucks.... ([SunRescue] IPC dead as doornail... possible causes? )

[Dave McGuire]

On April 29, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> > >> Does gcc generate 64-bit code at all ? I don't think so but if someone
> > >> proves me wrong i wouldn't be angry on them.                        
> > >
> > >It must do.  NetBSD runs on both DEC-Alpha and Sparc-64 and only uses    
> > >GCC (or at least the more recent egcs version) as the system
> > >compiler....                                                           
> > 
> > from what i understand, GCC is able to generate 64-bit code, but in the case
> > of the sparc (can't speak for the alpha, although mine runs fine) it generates
> > very poor code.
> 
> I think that's basically true of GCC across the board, but certainly for
> Alpha it turns out to be less than optimal for at least two sample
> benchmarks, as shown in this recent post from <port-alpha at netbsd.org>:

  Actually, though this may not seem relevant to many due to the age
of the platforms involved, GCC has the reputation of generating truly
superb code on 68K and VAX platforms, and a few other CISC
architectures.

  GCC's performance on more modern processors, however, suffers due to
the fact that the GCC development team seems to have "intel blinders"
on...they don't seem to understand that there's more to the computing
world than crappy Intel processors.  So GCC's performance on the
Pentium-of-the-week is great, while on everything else it blows dog.


             -Dave McGuire