Compiler Tuning With Intel Ivy Bridge Processors
Building software while using the more advanced micro-architecture targets does slow down the compiler a bit, but that is not surprising.
The C-Ray performance was rather sporadic, which seems to be a problem when running this program now on the Linux 3.4 kernel. There is some odd regression going on with the new kernel that needs to be bisected -- in no previous Linux 3.x/2.6.x kernel in the past have I seen this behavior out of C-Ray.
There is not much to look at with Smallpt.