Re: Folk Theorem: Assemblers are superior to Compilers

rfg@netcom.com (Ronald F. Guilmette) writes:
>[I hope code quality often suffers because responsible compiler
> vendors are doing their best to work on correctness first and place
> a lower priority on whiz-bang optimizations.]


I visited one of the implementors of a compiler and was surprised to find
it larger (more lines of source code) than GNU CC. I asked why and was
told that there were a variety of reasons, such as the overhead of
internal modularization; support for various code generation styles such
as shared libraries, support for varied processor implementations, and so
on. However, the biggest single reason for big code was from squeezing
another N% of performance from the generated code. The person argued that
nobody within the company had expressed a crying need for better code but
that market forces and a need to look good on e.g., SPEC benchmarks led
them to focus on detailed optimizations and thus to the larger code.


;-D on ( The Folk Historian ) Pardo
[In the PC tools biz, there seems to be a large market for compilers that
produce very fast but wrong code. Don't ask me why. -John]
--

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