Fedora Core 4 Test 1 slips

Fedora Core 4 Test 1 slips

Posted Feb 24, 2005 8:37 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to: Fedora Core 4 Test 1 slips by jd
Parent article: Fedora Core 4 Test 1 slips

I'm impressed by the Fedora team's dedication to using modern technology and advanced optimization techniques. Does this mean that we'll start seeing code compiled for the Pentium III, Pentium 4 or Pentium M? That would be one way to make use of advanced optimization techniques GCC already has.

Your belief that advanced optimization techniques imply compilation for a particular CPU is... peculiar.

Most of the improvements in GCC 4.0 are infrastructural, and while they should lead to a faster compiler that's much better at optimizing, that improvement will be visible to everyone no matter what their CPU, not just people with new CPUs.

(In fact, the largest single problem with GCC's optimization on IA32 right now is probably the tangled intertwined mess that is the regalloc/reload passes; but so far no attempt to rewrite those monsters has succeeded.)

The largest improvements with GCC 4.0 are invisible: right now, the focus is on getting the tree-ssa optimizers to carry out the same optimizations as the RTL ones did, so the RTL optimizers can be ditched --- well, right now the focus is on stabilization for the GCC 4.0 release, but you know what I mean. (That's not to say that there aren't a whole heap of nifty new optimizations, too. But getting rid of RTL optimizers that try to build palaces using individual grains of sand is I think more important.)

(Joe, feel free to correct me if I'm talking nonsense, which I probably am.)

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