Sun compares their compiler tools to GNU tools

[Colin Douglas Howell <howell at cs dot stanford dot edu>]

Sun has published a marketing comparison of their compiler suite,
Visual WorkShop C++ 3.0, with the GNU compiler tools.  See the URL:

	http://www.sun.com/workshop/visual/

The comparison includes performance test results on UltraSPARC.  Of
course, this is designed to sell Sun's compiler tools, and is thus
rather biased.  Also, their performance tests were done against old
versions of gcc; they compare version 4.2 of their C, C++, and FORTRAN
compilers with egcs 1.0.1 (and in one case with gcc 2.7.2.2).  So the
recent egcs optimizations and SPARC backend improvements are not
tested.  (On the other hand, Sun is currently beta-testing version 5.0
of their compilers.)

I figured people might want to know what the competition is up to.  Is
anyone in a position to comment on the specific tests or do
comparisons with the current egcs versions?

Also, this comparison is currently being discussed at slashdot.org,
just in case anyone wants to add a voice of reason into that
discussion.

-- 
Colin Douglas Howell                    Systems Administrator
e-mail:  howell@cs.stanford.edu         Computer Facilities Group
office:  (650) 723-2491                 Computer Science Department
                                        Stanford University