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From: james@raid.dell.com (James Van Artsdalen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What should GNU run on
Message-ID: <2586@dell.dell.com>
Date: 8 Aug 89 05:43:56 GMT
References: <20528@adm.BRL.MIL>
Sender: news@dell.dell.com
Reply-To: james@raid.dell.com (James Van Artsdalen)
Organization: Institute for Applied Cosmology
Lines: 15

In <20528@adm.BRL.MIL>, keith@fstohp.lynn.ge.com (Keith D Gregory) wrote:

> But is it going to be that easy to throw away history, such as GCC et al?  If
> GCC was written to produce optimal code for the VAX/68000 (dare I say PDP-11)
> style architecture, will it transport well to the Intel architecture?

Sigh.  Look before you leap...  gcc works fine on the 386.  It is
competitive with the commercial compilers I have examined.  The only
weak spot is in floating point support: the FP half of the *86
architecture is stack (as opposed to the conventional integer half).
gcc works with 386 FP, it's just not fast.  Fortunately this affects
very few people.
-- 
James R. Van Artsdalen          james@raid.dell.com       "Live Free or Die"
DCC Corporation       9505 Arboretum Blvd Austin TX 78759       512-338-8789