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LLVM/Clang 3.2 Compiler Competing With GCC

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  • LLVM/Clang 3.2 Compiler Competing With GCC

    Phoronix: LLVM/Clang 3.2 Compiler Competing With GCC

    With last week's release of LLVM 3.2, here are new benchmarks of LLVM 3.2 with the Clang C/C++ compiler front-end. The LLVM/Clang 3.2 performance using last week's source code releases were compared to the earlier LLVM/Clang 3.1 release and then for competition was the GCC 4.7.2 stable release and the latest GCC 4.8.0 development snapshot.

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    GCC Wins hands down

    GCC wins hands down. GO and cry Apple fanboys !!!

    Comment


    • #3
      Does anyone know how the two compare on ARM processors? This seems to be an area where the two compete head-to-head.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by wargames View Post
        GCC wins hands down. GO and cry Apple fanboys !!!
        A) Just supporting LLVM doesn't make someone an "apple fanboy" so go and take your apparent GCC-fanboyism somewhere else.

        B) "Hands down" is a BIG stretch. LLVM was extremely competitive in just about every test that doesn't require OpenMP, and once OpenMP IS sorted out I bet those benchmarks will show LLVM is about the same as GCC in those tests as well.

        C) The benefits in LLVM aren't in speed. 1) Modularity-- something GCC cant accomplish without scrapping a large chunk of the codebase SPECIFICALLY because GNU WANTED a monolithic codebase so that companies couldn't pull in select portions of gcc and just use those. 2) Cleaner code base. 3) Competition finally amongst compilers finally. GCC has gone uncontested in the open source world for a very long time, its good to see a project finally giving it a run for its money and ensuring that they don't start to rest on their laurels
        All opinions are my own not those of my employer if you know who they are.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Ericg View Post
          A) Just supporting LLVM doesn't make someone an "apple fanboy" so go and take your apparent GCC-fanboyism somewhere else.

          B) "Hands down" is a BIG stretch. LLVM was extremely competitive in just about every test that doesn't require OpenMP, and once OpenMP IS sorted out I bet those benchmarks will show LLVM is about the same as GCC in those tests as well.

          C) The benefits in LLVM aren't in speed. 1) Modularity-- something GCC cant accomplish without scrapping a large chunk of the codebase SPECIFICALLY because GNU WANTED a monolithic codebase so that companies couldn't pull in select portions of gcc and just use those. 2) Cleaner code base. 3) Competition finally amongst compilers finally. GCC has gone uncontested in the open source world for a very long time, its good to see a project finally giving it a run for its money and ensuring that they don't start to rest on their laurels
          to 1) and this was and still is a viable reason
          to 2) can't judge... don't know it and do not care neither.
          to 3) well, as the test results show they did quite well over a lot of years even without competition. actually i think this shows quite well one major plus of oos, they do not really need competition to be pushed forward. imagine how bad a closed source compiler would have evolved without any competion? the few devs wouldn't care about issues...

          edit: before somebody gets me wrong: i do wellcome the new competition.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by a user View Post
            to 1) and this was and still is a viable reason
            to 2) can't judge... don't know it and do not care neither.
            to 3) well, as the test results show they did quite well over a lot of years even without competition. actually i think this shows quite well one major plus of oos, they do not really need competition to be pushed forward. imagine how bad a closed source compiler would have evolved without any competion? the few devs wouldn't care about issues...

            edit: before somebody gets me wrong: i do wellcome the new competition.
            No even Open Source Software absolutely needs competition, particularly when it's a monolithic product as opposed to a more modular one*. The only reason that GCC is somewhat faster at this point in time is that it's been being developed since 1987, LLVM on the other hand was started in 2003, which means GCC has 13 years of development time in advance of LLVM, that's more than twice the lifespan of LLVM.

            A perfect example of the competition bringing forth better products in OSS here with GCC being that GCC now has decent error reporting capability because of the LLVM people having done it. As well as a relatively large refactoring of the GCC codebase into C++ and otherwise.

            What we're seeing here though is the natural result in the difference in design between Modular and Monolithic architectures, a modular project make take a bit longer for initial design and setting up but once it's there it can accelerate far faster and far longer (almost if not indefinitely) whereas a monolithic application is much quicker to design and set up but without refactoring to a more modular design the development will slow eventually to a halt no matter how many people you throw at it, just because the codebase is so unwieldy, thus allowing a properly modularly designed application to accelerate past it.

            * Now theoretically a Completely Modular codebase could exist in a vaccuum and do quite well, but it still benefits if nothing else from pulling ideas from competing products

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            • #7
              Originally posted by a user View Post
              to 1) and this was and still is a viable reason
              to 2) can't judge... don't know it and do not care neither.
              to 3) well, as the test results show they did quite well over a lot of years even without competition. actually i think this shows quite well one major plus of oos, they do not really need competition to be pushed forward. imagine how bad a closed source compiler would have evolved without any competion? the few devs wouldn't care about issues...

              edit: before somebody gets me wrong: i do wellcome the new competition.
              GCC had major competition, what are you talking about? It's still the unpopular choice in a number of important fields where other compilers are dominant. Even in fields where it is dominant, the versions used are often forks of ancient crufty versions (in some cases 3.x, not even 4.x) with tons of vendor-specific changes (and the GPL is barely useful here since the FSF requires copyright assignment to roll code back into GCC proper, which said vendors have zero interest in granting, and hobbyist developers have little interest in patching, fixing, forking, or maintaining ancient vendor forks).

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              • #8
                I think it is safe to say that GCC has finally a competitor.

                Sure, they are released under different licences BUT we all agree that variety is man's wealth, do we?

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                • #9
                  I see quite a few useless test comparisons due to OpenMP not being on both compiler suites.

                  I look forward to useful test comparisons when OpenMP is a go into LLVM/Clang.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by wargames View Post
                    GCC wins hands down. GO and cry Apple fanboys !!!
                    Ignorance is your bliss.

                    Comment

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