GCC Link Time Optimization branch merged [LWN.net]

The Gnu Compiler Collection project has announced the merge of the Link Time Optimization branch. "Link Time Optimization (LTO) gives GCC the capability of dumping its internal representation (GIMPLE) to disk, so that all the different compilation units that make up a single executable can be optimized as a single module. This expands the scope of inter-procedural optimizations to encompass the whole program (or, rather, everything that is visible at link time)."

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GCC Link Time Optimization branch merged

Posted Oct 8, 2009 16:35 UTC (Thu) by meyert (subscriber, #32097) [Link]

Is this option useful for the linux kernel? It should get smaller and faster, shouldn't it?

effect on different software

Posted Oct 9, 2009 6:37 UTC (Fri) by pjm (subscriber, #2080) [Link]

It should benefit pretty much any program, including Linux; though Linux has had more optimization effort directed at it than most software, so the main benefit for Linux will be not so much an improvement in speed/memory efficiency, but rather reducing programmer effort and code contortions needed to get a given level of efficiency.

I'd expect most user-mode software to benefit more than Linux. Possibly other kernels like OpenBSD (which value simplicity and auditability more and runtime efficiency than Linux does) would benefit more.

All just idle speculation without having tested, of course.