Re: Intel C/C++ free compilers

[Rob Kendrick <rjek@...>]

On Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 06:08:43PM -0200, Euler German wrote:
> Hi All!
> 
> The thread on C compiler speeds on another list got my attention to the 
> Intel C/C++ compiler for Windows (trial) and Linux which is free for 
> non commercial purposes, though unsupported.
> 
> I'm wondering if someone used it to build Lua and if he/she notice any 
> speed gain as it is optimized to Intel platforms. Unfortunately, I have 
> no Linux machine yet... :(

I tried it with Lua 4, and it made quite a large difference, esp. if you
used the dodgy switches to speed floating point operations.  If you've
configured Lua to use ints instead of floating point numbers, I imagine
the speed difference would be greater. 

I didn't use a very good test of speed (ie, one that used all of the
VM's features) but it was noticably quicker.

The difference, however, wasn't *that* big from the performace of Lua 4
compiled with gcc 3.2 with carefully chosen optimise switches.  If
you're after a stonkingly fast Lua interpreter on x86, I suggest you try
gcc 3.2, icc (Intel's compiler) and CodePlay's VectorC.

B.
-- 
Rob Kendrick                                       http://www.pepperfish.net/
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