Re: Sun compares their compiler tools to GNU tools

[mrs at wrs dot com (Mike Stump)]

> Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 00:49:59 +0100 (MET)
> From: Gerald Pfeifer <pfeifer@dbai.tuwien.ac.at>
> To: egcs@cygnus.com
> cc: Colin Douglas Howell <howell@cs.stanford.edu>

> On Wed, 4 Nov 1998, Colin Douglas Howell wrote:
> > 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/

> Shall we add some official reply from EGCS developers and testers) to our
> web page?

If we can't say we're better now, what point is it?

> BTW, the page at the URL above is ridiculous,

No, it is not.  It is perfectly reasonable and valid.

> and this is the main page of that product! No link to more detailed
> information is evident.

It looked detailed enough for me.  Maybe you don't play in the
benchmark circles?  Maybe you can back up your statement better.  What
detail did you miss?  Did you follow the link and read the whole
thing, or just the 2 paragraphs?

>  . What's ``the latest from GNU''

What part of ``egcs-2.90.23 980102 (egcs-1.0.1 release)'' was unclear
to you?

>    in ``We examined the performance of the Sun C and C++ compilers,
>    comparing them with the latest from GNU''?

>  . Customer application (C code)  7%-30%
>    No source code available?

You seem to know know or understand specint or benchmarking, please
read comp.benchmarks for a year.

>    What does the range mean?

A range means that for some specific inputs to the application, the
performance was only 7% better, for other inputs, it was 30% faster.
I think this was perfectly clear and I think it was fully explained in
the article.  I'm begining to think that you didn't even spend the
time to read what they wrote.