compilation architecture

[Horst H. von Brand]

Callum Lerwick <seg at haxxed.com> wrote:

[...]

> Not quite "three times" faster, but 3.26% faster with i686. A major
> addition to the i686 architecture was cmov, and gcc is actually very
> aggressive about eliminating branching using cmovs, increasing
> performance on modern deeply pipelined processors by eliminating
> pipeline stalls.

[...]

> I suggest all key performance critical packages be made available in
> both i386 and i686 versions. glibc and openssl already do this. Off the
> top of my head, this would include Mesa, I know for a fact the majority
> of Second Life runtime is actually consumed by T&L inside Mesa/DRI. From
> what I understand, even Intel's latest chipsets lack hardware T&L. Makes
> sense, it helps sell more multi-core Intel processors, and probably
> helps consolidate power management.

Twice the size for 3% improvement in extremely CPU-intensive tasks, and no
gain whatsoever in load time, etc? That will translate to < 1% improvement
overall. Lost in the noise, anyway. Not worth it in my book.
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                    Fono: +56 32 2654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria             +56 32 2654239
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