We're out of tree codes; now what?

[Steven Bosscher]

On 3/19/07, Doug Gregor <doug.gregor@gmail.com> wrote:
> GCC has also been getting improved functionality, better
> optimizations, and better language support. Some of these improvements
> are going to cost us at compile time, because better optimizations can
> require more time, and today's languages require more work to compile
> and optimize than yesterday's. No, I don't want my compiler to be 5%
> slower, but I'll give up 5% for better standards conformance and
> improved code generation.

Of course, the problem is not 5%, but the yet again 5%, on top of, I
don't know, 200% since GCC 2.95.3??

Also, it is "better optimizations" for some purposes, but not for
others. For example, many of the >140 passes are redundant for typical
C code.


> It's not all bad news, either. Canonical types got us 3-5% speedup in
> the C++ front end (more on template-heavy code), so I figure I have at
> least a 3% speedup credit I can apply against the 9-bit code patch.
> That brings this patch under 2% net slow-down, so we should just put
> it in now :)

But only for C++.

I'm still in favor of the 9-bit code patch.  But I think the slowdown
should not be taken so lightly as you appear to do ;-)

Gr.
Steven