Re: Sun compares their compiler tools to GNU tools

[hjstein at bfr dot co dot il (Harvey J. Stein)]

Colin Douglas Howell <howell@CS.Stanford.EDU> writes:

 > 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.

When I compared egcs to Sun's C compiler about a year ago, using their
latest compiler at the time, I found my particular application ran
about 30% faster using egcs.  This was on a 300mhz ultrasparc.

The sun article is misleading in a number of ways.  One is (as you pointed
out) that they using gcc 2.7.2.2 in some tests.  Another is that they
use Sun's profiling optimization in other tests but not gcc's
equivalent feature.  A third is the compiler switches they use.  A
forth is the kinds of tests they do.  I posted comments on slashdot
about it.

-- 
Harvey J. Stein
BFM Financial Research
hjstein@bfr.co.il