Re: Intel C/C++ free compilers

[Eero Pajarre <epajarre@...>]

Rob Kendrick wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 06:08:43PM -0200, Euler German wrote:
>
> > Hi All!
> >
> > The thread on C compiler speeds on another list got my attention to the 
> > Intel C/C++ compiler for Windows (trial) and Linux which is free for 
> > non commercial purposes, though unsupported.
> >
> > I'm wondering if someone used it to build Lua and if he/she notice any 
> > speed gain as it is optimized to Intel platforms. Unfortunately, I have 
> > no Linux machine yet... :(
>
>
> I tried it with Lua 4, and it made quite a large difference, esp. if you
> used the dodgy switches to speed floating point operations.  If you've
> configured Lua to use ints instead of floating point numbers, I imagine
> the speed difference would be greater. 

My experience with the Intel Compiler has not been as good.
(Although I only have the 4.5 version of the windows compiler)
It is not the floating point, which might be the strong
area of the Intel compiler, which is the performance problem with
Lua for me, instead profiling and pipeline simulation seem to indicate
that cache misses and unpredictable branches are the CPU eaters with
the Lua VM.

In any case, I will check again because of your results.



		Eero