Hi, I've seen this as the case with the following types of applications:
1. HPC applications where Sun Studio optimization can help out considerably. This is the same in Linux/x86 shops who use non-gcc compilers for better optimizations. 2. Financial applications that process TB's of data for analysis. Would usually see about 20-30% improvement here. 3. Web Applications and tools. A few years back I use to work for a web hosting company and found that apache, perl, mysql, and qmail worked faster when compiled with Sun Studio. 4. SPEC benchmarks. These benchmarks do perform better with the Sun Studio compiler. Use to run these benchmarks to compare different server models and platforms. Now on a more practical side.. 1. Solaris itself is compiled with Sun Studio. 2. Take something like Quake 3 Arena and compare the performance between it being compiled on Sun Studio vs GCC, you'll see a difference while playing. 3. Just 3 years ago I recompiled all the open source tools (compilers, interpreted languages, xml tools, numerical libraries, etc.) we were using at a investment company. The question was posed if Sun Studio would make faster binaries and libraries. We did tests against some of the key tools and found that at least a 10-20% performance improvement was seen. So from my experience, I've seen a difference since Sun Studio 10 onwards and use it for all the software I compile. I think there is a lot of value in it. Now, I've seen the same kinds of results on other non-x86 platforms where the vendor compiler or a 3rd party compiler performed better than GCC. While it works on many platforms, it is not highly optimized on them. Obviously, Sun Studio is only on Solaris SPARC/x86 and Linux x86. It would be interesting to see Sun Studio on Power to support the OpenSolaris port there. But I don't know how difficult it would be to open source Sun Studio and do something like that. Of course, Sun was wise to buy Forte years ago, which I remember since I was in IT/Ops back then in the bay area. It may not seem like it on the surface, but it was a great investment and helped Sun's development tools and at the end of the day the performance increases in Solaris 9 considerably. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Octave J. Orgeron Solaris Virtualization Architect and Consultant Web: http://unixconsole.blogspot.com E-Mail: unixconsole at yahoo.com *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* ----- Original Message ---- From: Martin Bochnig <mar...@martux.org> To: Octave Orgeron <unixconsole at yahoo.com> Cc: Nicolas Williams <Nicolas.Williams at sun.com>; xwin-discuss at opensolaris.org; Alan Coopersmith <Alan.Coopersmith at sun.com>; Bart Smaalders <Bart.Smaalders at sun.com>; LSARC-ext at sun.com; PSARC-ext at sun.com Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 4:13:45 PM Subject: Re: Consolidations (Re: [xwin-discuss] Obsolescence of /usr/X11) On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 7:53 PM, Octave Orgeron <unixconsole at yahoo.com> wrote: > I disagree on the points about the sun studio compilers. I've seen better > binary and optimization results with sun studio than with GCC. I've worked > with GCC on other platforms, Power and Alpha.. and needless to say it's a > dog. All the development on GCC is really focused on x86 and most > optimizations for other platforms come from the vendors. Sun Studio on the > other hand has a great tool set and the fact that it is free should make the > idea of using GCC dead in my opinion. If anything, just more work around > dealing with GCC-isms would help compile and build FOSS apps. However, the > bigger issue on that front is that many of those FOSS apps are starting to > loose site of the UNIX philosophy of being easily portable between platforms. > So even if you use GCC, it may not work. > > *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* > Octave J. Orgeron > Solaris Virtualization Architect and Consultant > Web: http://unixconsole.blogspot.com > E-Mail: unixconsole at yahoo.com > *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Octave, this was true 20 years ago. Which kind of benchmark did you perform yourself? Yes, also on SPARC? The results might surprise you. But whatever, if nobody believes me, I will prove it. I dont like to fight with / against community fellows. When we have some precise numbers, we can continue our discussion. Until then, regards, %martin
