Re: Pgcc in Deb
Incidentally if you are doing a lot of computationally intensive
work it maybe worth buying a commercial compiler. We are using portland
here (about $549 for a single node license (We got f77/hpf/cc/c++, its
cheaper just to get C/C++ or f77)) but the code executes on an
entire farm obviously) but I've used edinburgh in the past and tested a
few others. In either case we have gotten significant
improvements..(20-30%) (tested on c/c++/f77 ) (To be honest g77 is
abysmal so going commercial was not exactly something we had much choice
on).
I've thought about running various bits of debian through
a commercial compiler but to be honest I think we aren't really
spending that large of a percentage of the CPU on the OS itself (even
X) so there really isn't going to be much to be gained unless of
course you are spending days running povray or something that is
integral to what is available in Debian. So maybe, it would be
interesting if someone was overly bored and recompiled all of debian
w/ say portland etc to see what would happen :).
That said, I think maybe the best hope is x fingers and hope that
SGI/Intel are doing cool things w/ compiler optimizations that will
be folded into gcc and also to encourage all the smart compiler people to
stop aligning themselves w/ commercial outfits and start working
cooperatively on something like gcc/g77(which isn't maintained at all I
believe).
-avi
(Who is not a smart compiler people)
Reply to: