GCC IMA & general future proposal

[Kenneth Zadeck]

Scott Robert Ladd wrote:

> I'll keep this short, then let you have the final word if you want it.
>
> David Edelsohn wrote:
>
>>>> they have guaranteed that no one will use the compiler for anything 
>>>> except benchmarking.
>>>
>>
>> Scott> Incorrect. I know many people who use Intel's compiler for 
>> production code, especially in the high-performance and Fortran
>> communities.
>>
>> Again, that is not the point of Ken's comment.
>
>
> Ken could have made his point without all the anti-Intel rhetoric.
> Geoff's proposal doesn't even mention Intel by name, so I wonder why Ken
> felt it necessary to use this as a platform for assailing Intel?
>
I have nothing against intel.  However their compiler is designed to 
PRIMARILY highlight their hardware.  They will be the first to admit 
that they are a hardware company and they primarily support software 
with the eye towards it enhancing their hardware.  There is nothing 
wrong with this attitude and over the years I have talked several Intel 
execs who are quite open about this policy.

Having said that my main reason for mentioning them was because at the 
ipa meeting the intel compiler was used as a model of a compiler that 
did almost nothing to produce the .o file and did all of the work at 
link time.  Furthemore the proposal was made that we should emulate 
this.  This model works if your customers are benchmark runners but is 
not the best model if your customers are software developers.

While the ibm compiler does a good job on benchmarks, it also does a 
very good job on a wide variety of applications that do not fit into the 
compile the whole world model, like their operating systems, their data 
base engines and their java virtual machines.