Re: does gcc 4.1 generate "faster" binaries than earlier gcc versions?

[David Daney <ddaney at avtrex dot com>]

Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:
> Perhaps the question is a bit silly, but I thought I'd ask it anyway.
>
> I'm compiling some software for a Linux/uClibc on a mipsel platform.
>
> Right now I'm using gcc 3.4.4 to do both native and cross-compilation.
>
> A while ago gcc 4.1 was released, and boasts many optimizations.
>
>
> As the mipsel devices I use are rather slow - here comes the point of my 
> question: will binaries I compile with gcc 4.1 be faster than these 
> compiled with 3.4.4?
>
> I don't really care about compilation time; I'm only concerned with the 
> speed of the binaries made with gcc 3.4.4 and 4.1 (i.e., will gzip 
> compiled with gcc 4.1 compress a given file faster than gzip compressed 
> with gcc 3.4.4).

Both gcc-3.4.4 and 4.1 are available to you, so in theory you could 
answer this question empirically (assuming that you also have the gzip 
sources and a file you could test the resulting gzip executable on).

You don't say what version of Binutils you are using.  But with recent 
snapshots of Binutils you can use '-Wa,-mno-shared, -ffunction-sections 
-fdata-sections -Wl,--gc-sections' to good effect on mips[el]-linux.

David Daney