Re: nasm over gas?

[Valdis . Kletnieks]

On Fri, 05 Sep 2003 16:51:21 PDT, Aaron Lehmann said:
> On Thu, Sep 04, 2003 at 10:57:12PM +0800, Michael Frank wrote:
> > As to using assembler, It is better to get rid of it but in special cases.
> > Todays compilers are the better coders in 98+% of applications

> isn't much room for improvement. This assembly is several times faster
> than what gcc would be able to generate.

You're making the rash leap of logic that "gcc" is anywhere representative of
what "todays compilers" are capable of.  For example, IBM recently released
a new version of their 'xlc' compiler with support for the PPC970 core:

http://www.spscicomp.org/ScicomP7/Presentations/Blainey-SciComp7_compiler_update.pdf

20 pages of marketing fluff, interesting graphs on the last 2 pages.  The upshot
is that for the SPECint2000 and SPECfp2000 benchmark suite, IBM's xlc was easily
able to generate code that ran almost twice as fast as gcc.  It was particularly
impressive on the eon, apsi, and sixtrack tests.

Not 10% faster code.  Not 20%.  *TWICE* as fast.

It usually isn't hard to hand-write code that's 20% faster than gcc's generated
code.  Anybody think they can consistently generate code by hand that's twice as fast?

/Valdis (who wonders if the kernel could be made xlc-compilable.. ;)

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