EGCS performance ?

[Joe Buck]

David E. writes:

[ re: special optimizations to boost benchmark scores ]

> I believe that GCC explicitly has a
> policy of not implementing those types of optimizations.  Anybody who
> chooses a compiler based on industry benchmarks as opposed to benchmarking
> their particular task deserves what they get.

Well, this depends on the quality of the benchmarks.  SPEC 95 isn't bad,
because most of the benchmarks are actual, widely used programs or
portions of them.  Dhrystone, on the other hand, is so easy to optimize
for in ways that don't improve real programs that it should never be
used for comparisions: you are only comparing how much effort the compiler
maker put into improving Dhrystone and learn little about the quality
of the compiler.

(I do think that we should take a look, though, if egcs version N+1 gets
a worse Dhrystone mark than version N, since we shouldn't go backwards
without finding out why).

> David
>