🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan16.213200.11632@fuw.edu.pl> rzm@ipx1.mat.torun.edu.pl (Rafal Maszkowski) writes:
>Why do you people run gcc on Convex? cc is optimized for vector computing.
>Is gcc as well? 
>Is anything else better in gcc?

I use gcc for several reasons:

  o  it compiles faster (although I have to admit that I have not done
     any real speed comparisons lately)

  o  it is MUCH easier to port free software from the net using gcc,
     especially when that software was developed using gcc in the first place.
     gcc runs on many different platforms, so may different software packages
     work with gcc on the first try.

  o  gcc has better warning and error detection capabilities (IMHO)

  o  gcc includes a full native-code C++ compiler that WORKS (take a look at
     Convex C++ to see what I mean :-)

  o  gcc does better scalar optimisation than Convex cc -- I don't know if this
     is still fair to say, but it used to be that gcc code was faster and also
     smaller than cc.  This is also due to sme other tricks, like stdlib inline
     etc.  I have not built any major package with both compilers for a while, 
     so things might have changed.

If you want optimal use of Convex hardware and vectorisation, then you should
by all means use Convex cc, that's what it was written to do.  But even then,
gcc comes handy as an additional error-checking tool, as a measure for the 
portability of your code, etc.

As usual, I would like the best of both worlds :-)

-- Volker
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