Re: RH 5.1

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

Cloudmaster said:
> >From what I understood, egcs is just a more optimizedcompiler, similar to
> gcc - but it just more efficiently optimizes for 486 and lower (on intel).
> The pgcc group patches egcs to optimize for pentiums.  At least, this is
> the way I understood it.  According to the pgcc FAQ (again, in my
> interpretation without doing signifigant research), egcs has a few
> optimizations for pentium, but it's focus is on making a more efficient
> gcc, while pgcc builds on egcs to apply those efficiencies to pentiums.

Actually, pgcc has been around a lot longer than egcs.  It used to be
just gcc with Pentium optimization patches.  Because pgcc-compiled
binaries are *so* much faster on Pentiums, and gcc development seemed
to have stagnated considerably, (as I understand it) the pgcc people,
Cygnus, and others started working on egcs to add in those
optimizations (and others), to work on gcc's C++ support (which has
traditionally been hideous), etc.

Since egcs got going, I haven't paid any attention to pgcc, but it
wouldn't surprise me any if they've moved to using egcs as a base.  If
they have, then pgcc probably produces some amazing code for Pentiums,
although I'd be a little too scared of it to use it for any important
code.  :-)  (Besides, I've got a K6.  Why should I care about Pentium
optimizations.  ;)

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Linux Users of Central Illinois
(217)698-1694             | Meetings the 4th Tuesday of every month
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.luci.org/ for more info

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