Performance with Intel Foster chip

[Jan Hubicka]

> Paolo Carlini wrote:
> 
> >Thomas Hiller wrote:
> >
> >>Hi,
> >>
> >>will gcc 3.1 support the architecture of the Intel Foster chip ?
> >
> >
> >What's "Foster"? The code name of a new member of the P4 family?
> >
> >P.
> >
> That's the name of the upcoming server chip (to be announced at CeBit). 
> Let's say it's a P4 for servers.
> What's special about this chip is that it has two execution units in the 
> core. And I'm not sure, whether the current gcc can make use of these 
> two units.

I believe these units are visiable via hyperthreading functionallity, so
any code that is multithreaded can take advantage of that (with some kernel 
side tunning).

GCC 3.1 has basic support for tunning for P4 architecture. Not perfect, but it
is at the place.  I plan to run comparison agains P3 optimized code soon to see
what it does in practice.

Concerning floating point operations, the P4 and -mfpmath=sse is huge win.

Honza
> 
> - Thomas
>