Intel ISPC 1.13 Compiler Brings Performance Boost To AVX-512 Systems

Intel's ISPC compiler (Implicit SPMD Program Compiler) for targeting its C-based single-program, multiple data language is out now with a new feature release.

ISPC already advertises performance speed-ups of three to six times faster depending upon the AVX configuration of the CPU being tested and core count. But with ISPC 1.13 they are continuing to work on making this SPMD program compiler even faster, particularly for AVX-512.

ISPC 1.13 has a performance boost for AVX-512 targets due to an improved internal representation of masks, they can see around 5% speed-ups... Not as exciting as some of their past performance achievements, but it all accumulates with time. ISPC 1.13 is also re-based against LLVM 10.0 upstream providing for more potential performance benefits across all their CPU targets.

ISPC 1.13 also now considers cross-compilation support to be production ready and there are several fixes throughout.

Rounding out this Intel compiler update is also now marking FreeBSD as a supported target operating system. The release notes do mention though that for FreeBSD "it's not well tested."

More details on ISPC 1.13 over on GitHub.