-mtune=cpu-type- Tune to cpu-type everything applicable about the generated code, except
for the ABI and the set of available instructions. The choices for
cpu-type are:
- generic
- Produce code optimized for the most common IA32/AMD64/EM64T processors.
If you know the CPU on which your code will run, then you should use
the corresponding -mtune option instead of
-mtune=generic. But, if you do not know exactly what CPU users
of your application will have, then you should use this option.
As new processors are deployed in the marketplace, the behavior of this
option will change. Therefore, if you upgrade to a newer version of
GCC, the code generated option will change to reflect the processors
that were most common when that version of GCC was released.
There is no -march=generic option because -march
indicates the instruction set the compiler can use, and there is no
generic instruction set applicable to all processors. In contrast,
-mtune indicates the processor (or, in this case, collection of
processors) for which the code is optimized.
- native
- This selects the CPU to tune for at compilation time by determining
the processor type of the compiling machine. Using -mtune=native
will produce code optimized for the local machine under the constraints
of the selected instruction set. Using -march=native will
enable all instruction subsets supported by the local machine (hence
the result might not run on different machines).
- i386
- Original Intel's i386 CPU.
- i486
- Intel's i486 CPU. (No scheduling is implemented for this chip.)
- i586, pentium
- Intel Pentium CPU with no MMX support.
- pentium-mmx
- Intel PentiumMMX CPU based on Pentium core with MMX instruction set support.
- pentiumpro
- Intel PentiumPro CPU.
- i686
- Same as
generic, but when used as march option, PentiumPro
instruction set will be used, so the code will run on all i686 family chips.
- pentium2
- Intel Pentium2 CPU based on PentiumPro core with MMX instruction set support.
- pentium3, pentium3m
- Intel Pentium3 CPU based on PentiumPro core with MMX and SSE instruction set
support.
- pentium-m
- Low power version of Intel Pentium3 CPU with MMX, SSE and SSE2 instruction set
support. Used by Centrino notebooks.
- pentium4, pentium4m
- Intel Pentium4 CPU with MMX, SSE and SSE2 instruction set support.
- prescott
- Improved version of Intel Pentium4 CPU with MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instruction
set support.
- nocona
- Improved version of Intel Pentium4 CPU with 64-bit extensions, MMX, SSE,
SSE2 and SSE3 instruction set support.
- core2
- Intel Core2 CPU with 64-bit extensions, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 and SSSE3
instruction set support.
- k6
- AMD K6 CPU with MMX instruction set support.
- k6-2, k6-3
- Improved versions of AMD K6 CPU with MMX and 3dNOW! instruction set support.
- athlon, athlon-tbird
- AMD Athlon CPU with MMX, 3dNOW!, enhanced 3dNOW! and SSE prefetch instructions
support.
- athlon-4, athlon-xp, athlon-mp
- Improved AMD Athlon CPU with MMX, 3dNOW!, enhanced 3dNOW! and full SSE
instruction set support.
- k8, opteron, athlon64, athlon-fx
- AMD K8 core based CPUs with x86-64 instruction set support. (This supersets
MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3dNOW!, enhanced 3dNOW! and 64-bit instruction set extensions.)
- k8-sse3, opteron-sse3, athlon64-sse3
- Improved versions of k8, opteron and athlon64 with SSE3 instruction set support.
- amdfam10, barcelona
- AMD Family 10h core based CPUs with x86-64 instruction set support. (This
supersets MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4A, 3dNOW!, enhanced 3dNOW!, ABM and 64-bit
instruction set extensions.)
- winchip-c6
- IDT Winchip C6 CPU, dealt in same way as i486 with additional MMX instruction
set support.
- winchip2
- IDT Winchip2 CPU, dealt in same way as i486 with additional MMX and 3dNOW!
instruction set support.
- c3
- Via C3 CPU with MMX and 3dNOW! instruction set support. (No scheduling is
implemented for this chip.)
- c3-2
- Via C3-2 CPU with MMX and SSE instruction set support. (No scheduling is
implemented for this chip.)
- geode
- Embedded AMD CPU with MMX and 3dNOW! instruction set support.
While picking a specific cpu-type will schedule things appropriately
for that particular chip, the compiler will not generate any code that
does not run on the i386 without the -march=cpu-type option
being used.
-march=cpu-type- Generate instructions for the machine type cpu-type. The choices
for cpu-type are the same as for -mtune. Moreover,
specifying -march=cpu-type implies -mtune=cpu-type.
-mcpu=cpu-type- A deprecated synonym for -mtune.
-mfpmath=unit- Generate floating point arithmetics for selected unit unit. The choices
for unit are:
- `387'
- Use the standard 387 floating point coprocessor present majority of chips and
emulated otherwise. Code compiled with this option will run almost everywhere.
The temporary results are computed in 80bit precision instead of precision
specified by the type resulting in slightly different results compared to most
of other chips. See -ffloat-store for more detailed description.
This is the default choice for i386 compiler.
- `sse'
- Use scalar floating point instructions present in the SSE instruction set.
This instruction set is supported by Pentium3 and newer chips, in the AMD line
by Athlon-4, Athlon-xp and Athlon-mp chips. The earlier version of SSE
instruction set supports only single precision arithmetics, thus the double and
extended precision arithmetics is still done using 387. Later version, present
only in Pentium4 and the future AMD x86-64 chips supports double precision
arithmetics too.
For the i386 compiler, you need to use -march=cpu-type, -msse
or -msse2 switches to enable SSE extensions and make this option
effective. For the x86-64 compiler, these extensions are enabled by default.
The resulting code should be considerably faster in the majority of cases and avoid
the numerical instability problems of 387 code, but may break some existing
code that expects temporaries to be 80bit.
This is the default choice for the x86-64 compiler.
- `sse,387'
- Attempt to utilize both instruction sets at once. This effectively double the
amount of available registers and on chips with separate execution units for
387 and SSE the execution resources too. Use this option with care, as it is
still experimental, because the GCC register allocator does not model separate
functional units well resulting in instable performance.
-masm=dialect- Output asm instructions using selected dialect. Supported
choices are `intel' or `att' (the default one). Darwin does
not support `intel'.
-mieee-fp-mno-ieee-fp- Control whether or not the compiler uses IEEE floating point
comparisons. These handle correctly the case where the result of a
comparison is unordered.
-msoft-float- Generate output containing library calls for floating point.
Warning: the requisite libraries are not part of GCC.
Normally the facilities of the machine's usual C compiler are used, but
this can't be done directly in cross-compilation. You must make your
own arrangements to provide suitable library functions for
cross-compilation.
On machines where a function returns floating point results in the 80387
register stack, some floating point opcodes may be emitted even if
-msoft-float is used.
-mno-fp-ret-in-387- Do not use the FPU registers for return values of functions.
The usual calling convention has functions return values of types
float and double in an FPU register, even if there
is no FPU. The idea is that the operating system should emulate
an FPU.
The option -mno-fp-ret-in-387 causes such values to be returned
in ordinary CPU registers instead.
-mno-fancy-math-387- Some 387 emulators do not support the
sin, cos and
sqrt instructions for the 387. Specify this option to avoid
generating those instructions. This option is the default on FreeBSD,
OpenBSD and NetBSD. This option is overridden when -march
indicates that the target cpu will always have an FPU and so the
instruction will not need emulation. As of revision 2.6.1, these
instructions are not generated unless you also use the
-funsafe-math-optimizations switch.
-malign-double-mno-align-double- Control whether GCC aligns
double, long double, and
long long variables on a two word boundary or a one word
boundary. Aligning double variables on a two word boundary will
produce code that runs somewhat faster on a `Pentium' at the
expense of more memory.
On x86-64, -malign-double is enabled by default.
Warning: if you use the -malign-double switch,
structures containing the above types will be aligned differently than
the published application binary interface specifications for the 386
and will not be binary compatible with structures in code compiled
without that switch.
-m96bit-long-double-m128bit-long-double- These switches control the size of
long double type. The i386
application binary interface specifies the size to be 96 bits,
so -m96bit-long-double is the default in 32 bit mode.
Modern architectures (Pentium and newer) would prefer long double
to be aligned to an 8 or 16 byte boundary. In arrays or structures
conforming to the ABI, this would not be possible. So specifying a
-m128bit-long-double will align long double
to a 16 byte boundary by padding the long double with an additional
32 bit zero.
In the x86-64 compiler, -m128bit-long-double is the default choice as
its ABI specifies that long double is to be aligned on 16 byte boundary.
Notice that neither of these options enable any extra precision over the x87
standard of 80 bits for a long double.
Warning: if you override the default value for your target ABI, the
structures and arrays containing long double variables will change
their size as well as function calling convention for function taking
long double will be modified. Hence they will not be binary
compatible with arrays or structures in code compiled without that switch.
-mmlarge-data-threshold=number- When -mcmodel=medium is specified, the data greater than
threshold are placed in large data section. This value must be the
same across all object linked into the binary and defaults to 65535.
-mrtd- Use a different function-calling convention, in which functions that
take a fixed number of arguments return with the
ret num
instruction, which pops their arguments while returning. This saves one
instruction in the caller since there is no need to pop the arguments
there.
You can specify that an individual function is called with this calling
sequence with the function attribute `stdcall'. You can also
override the -mrtd option by using the function attribute
`cdecl'. See Function Attributes.
Warning: this calling convention is incompatible with the one
normally used on Unix, so you cannot use it if you need to call
libraries compiled with the Unix compiler.
Also, you must provide function prototypes for all functions that
take variable numbers of arguments (including printf);
otherwise incorrect code will be generated for calls to those
functions.
In addition, seriously incorrect code will result if you call a
function with too many arguments. (Normally, extra arguments are
harmlessly ignored.)
-mregparm=num- Control how many registers are used to pass integer arguments. By
default, no registers are used to pass arguments, and at most 3
registers can be used. You can control this behavior for a specific
function by using the function attribute `regparm'.
See Function Attributes.
Warning: if you use this switch, and
num is nonzero, then you must build all modules with the same
value, including any libraries. This includes the system libraries and
startup modules.
-msseregparm- Use SSE register passing conventions for float and double arguments
and return values. You can control this behavior for a specific
function by using the function attribute `sseregparm'.
See Function Attributes.
Warning: if you use this switch then you must build all
modules with the same value, including any libraries. This includes
the system libraries and startup modules.
-mpc32-mpc64-mpc80-
Set 80387 floating-point precision to 32, 64 or 80 bits. When -mpc32
is specified, the significands of results of floating-point operations are
rounded to 24 bits (single precision); -mpc64 rounds the the
significands of results of floating-point operations to 53 bits (double
precision) and -mpc80 rounds the significands of results of
floating-point operations to 64 bits (extended double precision), which is
the default. When this option is used, floating-point operations in higher
precisions are not available to the programmer without setting the FPU
control word explicitly.
Setting the rounding of floating-point operations to less than the default
80 bits can speed some programs by 2% or more. Note that some mathematical
libraries assume that extended precision (80 bit) floating-point operations
are enabled by default; routines in such libraries could suffer significant
loss of accuracy, typically through so-called "catastrophic cancellation",
when this option is used to set the precision to less than extended precision.
-mstackrealign- Realign the stack at entry. On the Intel x86, the
-mstackrealign option will generate an alternate prologue and
epilogue that realigns the runtime stack. This supports mixing legacy
codes that keep a 4-byte aligned stack with modern codes that keep a
16-byte stack for SSE compatibility. The alternate prologue and
epilogue are slower and bigger than the regular ones, and the
alternate prologue requires an extra scratch register; this lowers the
number of registers available if used in conjunction with the
regparm attribute. The -mstackrealign option is
incompatible with the nested function prologue; this is considered a
hard error. See also the attribute force_align_arg_pointer,
applicable to individual functions.
-mpreferred-stack-boundary=num- Attempt to keep the stack boundary aligned to a 2 raised to num
byte boundary. If -mpreferred-stack-boundary is not specified,
the default is 4 (16 bytes or 128 bits).
On Pentium and PentiumPro, double and long double values
should be aligned to an 8 byte boundary (see -malign-double) or
suffer significant run time performance penalties. On Pentium III, the
Streaming SIMD Extension (SSE) data type __m128 may not work
properly if it is not 16 byte aligned.
To ensure proper alignment of this values on the stack, the stack boundary
must be as aligned as that required by any value stored on the stack.
Further, every function must be generated such that it keeps the stack
aligned. Thus calling a function compiled with a higher preferred
stack boundary from a function compiled with a lower preferred stack
boundary will most likely misalign the stack. It is recommended that
libraries that use callbacks always use the default setting.
This extra alignment does consume extra stack space, and generally
increases code size. Code that is sensitive to stack space usage, such
as embedded systems and operating system kernels, may want to reduce the
preferred alignment to -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2.
-mmmx-mno-mmx
-msse-mno-sse
-msse2-mno-sse2
-msse3-mno-sse3
-mssse3-mno-ssse3
-msse4.1-mno-sse4.1
-msse4.2-mno-sse4.2
-msse4-mno-sse4
-msse4a
-mno-sse4a
-msse5-mno-sse5
-m3dnow-mno-3dnow
-mpopcnt-mno-popcnt
-mabm-mno-abm- These switches enable or disable the use of instructions in the MMX,
SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4A, SSE5, ABM or 3DNow! extended
instruction sets.
These extensions are also available as built-in functions: see
X86 Built-in Functions, for details of the functions enabled and
disabled by these switches.
To have SSE/SSE2 instructions generated automatically from floating-point
code (as opposed to 387 instructions), see -mfpmath=sse.
These options will enable GCC to use these extended instructions in
generated code, even without -mfpmath=sse. Applications which
perform runtime CPU detection must compile separate files for each
supported architecture, using the appropriate flags. In particular,
the file containing the CPU detection code should be compiled without
these options.
-mcld- This option instructs GCC to emit a
cld instruction in the prologue
of functions that use string instructions. String instructions depend on
the DF flag to select between autoincrement or autodecrement mode. While the
ABI specifies the DF flag to be cleared on function entry, some operating
systems violate this specification by not clearing the DF flag in their
exception dispatchers. The exception handler can be invoked with the DF flag
set which leads to wrong direction mode, when string instructions are used.
This option can be enabled by default on 32-bit x86 targets by configuring
GCC with the --enable-cld configure option. Generation of cld
instructions can be suppressed with the -mno-cld compiler option
in this case.
-mcx16- This option will enable GCC to use CMPXCHG16B instruction in generated code.
CMPXCHG16B allows for atomic operations on 128-bit double quadword (or oword)
data types. This is useful for high resolution counters that could be updated
by multiple processors (or cores). This instruction is generated as part of
atomic built-in functions: see Atomic Builtins for details.
-msahf- This option will enable GCC to use SAHF instruction in generated 64-bit code.
Early Intel CPUs with Intel 64 lacked LAHF and SAHF instructions supported
by AMD64 until introduction of Pentium 4 G1 step in December 2005. LAHF and
SAHF are load and store instructions, respectively, for certain status flags.
In 64-bit mode, SAHF instruction is used to optimize
fmod, drem
or remainder built-in functions: see Other Builtins for details.
-mrecip- This option will enable GCC to use RCPSS and RSQRTSS instructions (and their
vectorized variants RCPPS and RSQRTPS) with an additional Newton-Rhapson step
to increase precision instead of DIVSS and SQRTSS (and their vectorized
variants) for single precision floating point arguments. These instructions
are generated only when -funsafe-math-optimizations is enabled
together with -finite-math-only and -fno-trapping-math.
Note that while the throughput of the sequence is higher than the throughput
of the non-reciprocal instruction, the precision of the sequence can be
decreased by up to 2 ulp (i.e. the inverse of 1.0 equals 0.99999994).
-mveclibabi=type- Specifies the ABI type to use for vectorizing intrinsics using an
external library. Supported types are
acml for the AMD
math core library style of interfacing. GCC will currently emit
calls to __vrd2_sin, __vrd2_cos, __vrd2_exp,
__vrd2_log, __vrd2_log2, __vrd2_log10,
__vrs4_sinf, __vrs4_cosf, __vrs4_expf,
__vrs4_logf, __vrs4_log2f, __vrs4_log10f
and __vrs4_powf when using this type and -ftree-vectorize
is enabled. A ACML ABI compatible library will have to be specified
at link time.
-mpush-args-mno-push-args- Use PUSH operations to store outgoing parameters. This method is shorter
and usually equally fast as method using SUB/MOV operations and is enabled
by default. In some cases disabling it may improve performance because of
improved scheduling and reduced dependencies.
-maccumulate-outgoing-args- If enabled, the maximum amount of space required for outgoing arguments will be
computed in the function prologue. This is faster on most modern CPUs
because of reduced dependencies, improved scheduling and reduced stack usage
when preferred stack boundary is not equal to 2. The drawback is a notable
increase in code size. This switch implies -mno-push-args.
-mthreads- Support thread-safe exception handling on `Mingw32'. Code that relies
on thread-safe exception handling must compile and link all code with the
-mthreads option. When compiling, -mthreads defines
-D_MT; when linking, it links in a special thread helper library
-lmingwthrd which cleans up per thread exception handling data.
-mno-align-stringops- Do not align destination of inlined string operations. This switch reduces
code size and improves performance in case the destination is already aligned,
but GCC doesn't know about it.
-minline-all-stringops- By default GCC inlines string operations only when destination is known to be
aligned at least to 4 byte boundary. This enables more inlining, increase code
size, but may improve performance of code that depends on fast memcpy, strlen
and memset for short lengths.
-minline-stringops-dynamically- For string operation of unknown size, inline runtime checks so for small
blocks inline code is used, while for large blocks library call is used.
-mstringop-strategy=alg- Overwrite internal decision heuristic about particular algorithm to inline
string operation with. The allowed values are
rep_byte,
rep_4byte, rep_8byte for expanding using i386 rep prefix
of specified size, byte_loop, loop, unrolled_loop for
expanding inline loop, libcall for always expanding library call.
-momit-leaf-frame-pointer- Don't keep the frame pointer in a register for leaf functions. This
avoids the instructions to save, set up and restore frame pointers and
makes an extra register available in leaf functions. The option
-fomit-frame-pointer removes the frame pointer for all functions
which might make debugging harder.
-mtls-direct-seg-refs-mno-tls-direct-seg-refs- Controls whether TLS variables may be accessed with offsets from the
TLS segment register (
%gs for 32-bit, %fs for 64-bit),
or whether the thread base pointer must be added. Whether or not this
is legal depends on the operating system, and whether it maps the
segment to cover the entire TLS area.
For systems that use GNU libc, the default is on.
-mfused-madd-mno-fused-madd- Enable automatic generation of fused floating point multiply-add instructions
if the ISA supports such instructions. The -mfused-madd option is on by
default. The fused multiply-add instructions have a different
rounding behavior compared to executing a multiply followed by an add.