Pentium 4 Optimization Complimenting icc 5.0

["Walton, Shane" <swalton at dsrnet dot com>]

I have been benchmarking Dual 1GHz Pentium 3 vs. Dual 1.7GHz Pentium 4
Xeon systems with
known UNIX/LINUX benchmark suites such as "ubench" and "unixbenchmark".
My findings are
almost unbelievable.  The P3 system outperforms the P4 system by 20%.

I have my hands on an Intel C++ Compiler (5.0) for Linux optimized for
Pentium 4.  Rebuilding
the benchmark utils with this compiler skewed the results so that the P4
was 30% better than
the P3 system.

All this comes down to using a "gcc" compiler vs. the Intel "icc".  Is
there something that I don't
know about gcc, such as a patch or optimization flags that would give me
the expected performance
from a gcc built binary on a P4 system?  If not, is there any plans to
add such support?  Thanks.

Here is the basic config for testing environment:

RedHat 6.2 and RedHat 7.2
egcs 2.91.66 (egcs-1.1.2 release)
gcc 2.96
Linux Kernel 2.4.16 SMP

Intel C++ Compiler for Linux 5.0

Shane M. Walton, Software Engineer
Digital System Resources, Inc.
swalton@dsrnet.com
703.234.1674