A READER WRITES to bring our attention to latest issue of German magazine, c"t. According to the magazine"s own tests, a new Intel V8 compiler can give a boost to the performance of applications running on Intel platforms by between 5 and 10 per cent. The chipmaker may be miffed to learn, however, that its compiler can help boost the same apps by a similar margin on rival AMD"s Athlon64 platform, when suitably tweaked.
According to our correspondent, the compiler switch -QxN produces x86 code which runs only on P4 CPUs, not on AMD CPUs. However, the boffins at c"t used the -QxN to produce code, patched out the CPU type inquiry and so managed to get the code to run on the Athlon64. As a result the chip notched up a record-breaking Spec score.
According to the tests, under Windows, the P4 3200 gets a SPECint2000base value of 1286 while the Athlon64 3400+ scores 1404. Although, in SPECfp2000base, the P4 3200 scores 1257, against the Athlon64 3400+"s score of 1227.