Re: [Help-gsl] float vs double and ICC

[Gordan Bobic]

On Thu, 19 Jul 2007, Brian Gough wrote:

> > On a separate note, has there been any effort to test or improve automatic 
> > vectorization of GSL libraries when compiling with ICC?
> 
> GSL is part of the GNU project, so we recommend using GCC.

That goes without saying - but while GCC may be the most ubiqutous 
compiler these days (and I am not saying that this is a bad thing, or 
that there's anything wrong with GCC), it doesn't mean it's the one that 
produces fastest running code. On maths-heavy operations I have seen ICC 
come out ahead by nearly an order of magnitude (8.5x on P4 vs. GCC 3.2, 
4.5x on P3 vs GCC 3.2, and 4.5x vs GCC 4.1.1 on Core2).

Gordan