Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!necntc!ima!haddock!suitti
From: suitti@haddock.ISC.COM (Steve Uitti)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Benchmarking C Compilers (was Re: LightspeedC 3.0 Review (long))
Keywords: Lightspeed C
Message-ID: <5456@haddock.ISC.COM>
Date: 25 Jul 88 18:25:57 GMT
References: <76000259@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <4990@husc6.harvard.edu> <3133@Portia.Stanford.EDU> <422@dbase.UUCP>
Reply-To: suitti@haddock.ima.isc.com (Steve Uitti)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 29

In article <422@dbase.UUCP> awd@dbase.UUCP (Alastair Dallas) writes:
>
>I happen to know one of the authors of gcc.  My impression of his skill is
>such that I believe the ridiculously high numbers quoted for its performance.
>As for LightspeedC, it's obvious from the documentation that Think's main
>claim for their compiler is speed of compilation, not execution.  I have 
>always assumed that LSC's output was slightly larger and slightly slower
>than optimal.  Time-critical stuff should be in assembler anyway.
	Note however that a slow compiler does not guarantee better
(or even good) code.  Otherwise bright people often buy Microsoft C
over Turbo C since it costs five times as much, has a three to four
times slower compile speed, etc.  So far, Turbo C has always produced
code that is smaller, and that runs within 5 percent of usoft C (half
of the time it is quicker).  My comparison between LSC and Sun's "cc"
was very favorable, considering that a Sun III has a quicker CPU than
a Mac II.  I'd really like to see a quick compiler for a UNIX box.

>Programming on a Mac for a Mac is such a difficult proposition
	Not as bad as on a Commodore 64.  C Power does pretty well here.
>
>By the way, I *still* haven't gotten 3.0.
>/alastair/
	I receive LSC 3.0 while on vacation, in the last couple of
weeks.  I put my request in the mail the day after Rich posted the
announcement.  I reran my floating point benchmarks, and obtained a
factor of ten improvement on the Mac II.  Good.  My PC clone (at 4.77
MHz, but with an 8087) is no longer quicker than my Mac II for
floating point using a real language.

	Stephen Uitti