AMD Athlon optimizations

[Eric Meijer]

Timothy J. Lee (timlee@netcom.com.DELETE-THIS.BIT) wrote:
: For the i386 target of gcc 2.95.2, processor optimization options
: include i386, i486, pentium, pentiumpro, and k6.  Which one is the
: best match for the AMD Athlon processor?

You should try this out.  Compile with different options, then run

time <command>

Most of the time I looked into these options they did not seem to have
much of an effect (< 1%).  For PentiumII it does seem to help to use -Os
instead of -O2.  This compiles for smaller code so that it fits better
in cache.  The primary cache of the athlon is much bigger, so I don't
know if it will have as much of an effect there.

In general there is only one way to find out what works best: benchmark
the application you are going to use, and do it with realistic data
sets.  What applies to small test cases maybe irrelevant to production
runs.

HTH,
Eric

-- 
 E.L. Meijer (tgakem@pebbles.chem.tue.nl)
 Eindhoven Univ. of Technology
 Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (SKA)