Re: GCC is 25 years old today

From	mev <mevermeulen@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: GCC is 25 years old today
Date	2012-04-01 06:20 -0700
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<12-04-003@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<12-03-051@comp.compilers> <12-03-053@comp.compilers> <12-03-062@comp.compilers> <12-03-074@comp.compilers>

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> I had an internship at HP in the late 1980s.  One of the people there
> commented that, when gcc came out, it's code was (IIRC) 30% faster
> than that of HPs compilers (for the 68k-based HP9000 computers running
> HP/UX); a year later HPs compiler had caught up quite a bit.  My guess
> is that HP's compiler was PCC-based, and that optimization did not play
> a big role in the Unix market until the arrival of RISCs and GCC.

I worked on HP's 68K compilers from 1986 to 1992, particularly C and
Fortran front ends.  These compilers were indeed PCC based.

We did optimization improvements including support for Dragon floating
point accelerator in HP-UX 6.5 (1988), peephole optimizations, adding
new inliner and some loop optimizations.  We also updated front ends
to support ANSI C and features from upcoming Fortran 90 standard.
There was also some work to improve strcmp/strcpy as they played
heavily into Dhrystone 1.0.  I still have the HP-UX 6.5 T-shirt with
release goals of >8 MIPS.

The performance emphasis came more from competitive positioning
against Sun and correlation with GCC introduction would be
coincidental in my recall.  PA-RISC, SPARC and MIPS were coming on the
scene also with optimization emphasis.

We were aware of GCC but more as an interesting curiosity than
competitively.  I also was at Denver C++ conference in October 1988
when Michael Tiemann presented what was first called GNU C++ but
became G++.

Mike Vermeulen

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GCC is 25 years old today Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-03-22 22:29 +0000
  Re: GCC is 25 years old today BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-24 08:44 -0700
    Re: GCC is 25 years old today "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-03-26 11:00 +0200
      Re: GCC is 25 years old today compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-03-27 09:27 +0000
        Re: GCC is 25 years old today "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-03-28 16:38 +0200
          Re: GCC is 25 years old today compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-03-29 12:30 +0000
            Re: GCC is 25 years old today "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-03-30 09:58 +0200
            Re: GCC is 25 years old today Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> - 2012-04-12 15:07 +0200
        Re: GCC is 25 years old today BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-28 13:46 -0700
    Re: GCC is 25 years old today glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-03-28 13:33 +0000
    Re: GCC is 25 years old today Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-03-28 16:47 +0100
      Re: GCC is 25 years old today Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> - 2012-03-29 15:03 +0200
      Re: GCC is 25 years old today Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.net> - 2012-03-29 09:17 -0500
        Re: GCC is 25 years old today BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-30 14:58 -0700
      Re: GCC is 25 years old today BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-29 09:48 -0700
        Re: GCC is 25 years old today Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> - 2012-03-30 10:58 +0200
          Re: GCC is 25 years old today BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-30 13:33 -0700
            Re: target platforms and .NET, was GCC is 25 years old today BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-03-31 13:08 -0700
      Re: GCC is 25 years old today anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-03-31 14:02 +0000
        Re: GCC is 25 years old today mev <mevermeulen@gmail.com> - 2012-04-01 06:20 -0700
      Re: GCC is 25 years old today jgk@panix.com (Joe keane) - 2012-04-01 01:05 +0000
  Re: GCC is 25 years old today Marco <prenom_nomus@yahoo.com> - 2012-04-01 08:24 -0700

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