Anders Magnusson's BSD-licensed pcc compiler has been imported into NetBSD's pkgsrc and OpenBSD's src tree. Anders wrote to NetBSD's tech-toolchain list: "It is not yet bug-free, but it can compile the i386 userspace. The big benefit of it is that it is fast, 5-10 times faster than gcc, while still producing reasonable code. The only optimization added so far is a multiple-register-class graph-coloring register allocator, which may be one of the best register allocators today. Conversion to SSA format is also implemented, but not yet the phi function. Not too difficult though, after that strength reduction is high on the list."
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Member since:2005-11-20
Member since:2005-10-02
Slow compilation is the price you pay for fast binaries.
GCC usually beats the crap out of Visual C++ in terms of producing the fastest binaries, as your earlier link to the Ultimate++ benchmark showed.
However, that doesn't mean PCC isn't interesting. It is very much so.
Just don't forget Marcellus is FUD'ing* and trolling as usual.
* http://www4.osnews.com/permalink?271690
Member since:2005-07-06
My point was that the major reason LLVM is faster than GCC is because it was built from the ground-up using the latest compiler techniques. GCC, in comparison, has incrementally evolved from a 20 year old codebase. The GCC folks don't have the luxury of going off somewhere and spending five years totally rebuilding things. They have way too many existing customers and existing platforms to support. LLVM doesn't have those kinds of constraints.
If trying to use the same main sources for all possible targets makes it slower for all, they really should split it up into target classes instead.
This wouldn't work in any way that didn't require huge code duplication.
Edited 2007-09-16 18:31
Member since:
2005-08-26
I'm not sure what you mean here. If you mean that GCC have to support old source, isn't it the case that old sources that compiled with 2.95 can't be compiled with a current version? Not the only case of GCC no longer supporting legacy sources.
If you mean GCC supporting features, there's plenty of stuff that has been removed from support over the years as well.
Aside from that, GCC is slow period. Even if you disable optimizations, it's painfully slow.
If trying to use the same main sources for all possible targets makes it slower for all, they really should split it up into target classes instead.