🚀 go-pugleaf

Michal Szymanski (msz@astro.Princeton.EDU) wrote:
: 
: Is there a C compiler available in public domain (possibly gcc with some
: options) which could use full capabilities of the coprocessor of 
: SUn Sparcstations. I have found the cc-compiled numerical programs to
: run much slower than their equivalents written in Fortran and compiled
: with "-cg89" or "-fast" option of the "f77". It seems to me that this is
: a matter of the way they use coprocessor.
: 

I have a similar experience, not only with gcc but also with cc (from Sun).
gcc has a flag (-mfpa) which would probably solve the problem
but this flag does not seem to work on Sun Sparc.
There obviously must be a reason for that.
I don't know if it is possible/difficult to modify gcc for making use of a FPU.

Sometime ago I made a comparison between Microsoft C & Fortran for
floating point operations - and Fortran was faster (both using 80x87).
I know that there is no "reasonable" explanation for that.

The problem might be not limited to use of FPU but it would certainly help,
if gcc would use FPU.
I am sure that the problem is of a more general interest.
Please post (or mail me) any info you will get.

Regards,
Marek Makowski


-- 
                  Marek Makowski  | Email: marek@iiasa.ac.at
         International Institute  | Phone: +43 02236 71.5210
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