correctness and comprehensiveness of compilers [was: Re: C compiletime]

[Vladimir Makarov]

tm_gccmail@mail.kloo.net wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Vladimir Makarov wrote:
> 
 >   I don't know about MICO test.  But it is amazing for me how such
> > respectable company as Intel could make a release (7.1) which can not
> > compile correctly some SPECINT2000 tests (vpr and gcc) with -O2 and -O3
> > for P4 (their mainstream processor).  I found that a week ago using the
> > demo CD which we got on the gcc summit.
> >
> > Vlad
> 
> I've noticed hardware vendor's compilers usually are pretty buggy. They're
> basically vehicles for getting good numbers on certain benchmarks, and
> often contain optimizations useless in the real world and/or fail to
> contain basic optimizations necessary for good performance on real-world
> programs.
> 
> (Evidently they don't use icc for SPEC...)
> 

They do use their compiler but version 7.0 (not 7.1) under Windows XP
(not Linux).  So apparently Linux is not their reference platform.  This
is the last Intel report I found

http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q2/cpu2000-20030422-02134.html

Vlad