For the attached case distilled from eglibc sources - the compiler ends up by running out of Virtual memory for compilations with -O2 -g . Turning this off using -fno-var-tracking-location appears to workaround the issue.
Here's the memory usage that I see for this one. PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 32172 ramana 20 0 3047m 2.7g 3856 R 67 92.4 0:57.00 cc1 The tools were configured with --target=arm-none-eabi --with-float=softfp --with-fpu=neon . However running the attached testcase with march=armv4t mfpu=vfp and mfloat-abi=soft doesn't have any different visible effects. -- Summary: Var tracking appears to run out of memory . Product: gcc Version: 4.5.0 Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: normal Priority: P3 Component: debug AssignedTo: unassigned at gcc dot gnu dot org ReportedBy: ramana at gcc dot gnu dot org GCC build triplet: i686-pc-linux-gnu GCC host triplet: i686-pc-linux-gnu GCC target triplet: arm-none-eabi http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=41342