FreeBSD Compiler Benchmark: gcc-base vs. gcc-ports vs. clang

[b. f.]

Martin Matuska wrote:
> we have performed a benchmark of the perl binary compiled with base gcc,
> ports gcc and ports clang using the perlbench benchmark suite.
> Our benchmark was performed solely on amd64 with 10 different processors
> and we have tried different -march= flags to compare binary performance
> of the same compiler with different flags.
>
> Here is some statistics from the results:
> - clang falls 10% behind the base gcc 4.2.1 (test average)
> - gcc 4.5 from ports gives 5-10% better average performance than the
> base gcc 4.2.1
> - 4% average penalty for Intel Atom and -march=nocona (using gcc from base)
> - core i7 class processors run best with -march=nocona (using gcc from base)

...

> More information, detailed test results and test configuration are at
> our blog:
> http://blog.vx.sk/archives/25-FreeBSD-Compiler-Benchmark-gcc-base-vs-gcc-ports-vs-clang.html

Methodological objections aside, thank you for conducting tests and
publishing the results. Are you going to continue to conduct tests as
lang/gcc4*  (the default for USE_GCC/USE_FORTRAN may be switched from
4.5 to 4.6 after the upcoming release of 4.6) and clang (there seem to
be improvements in the more recent versions -- e.g.,
http://llvm.org/viewvc/llvm-project?view=rev&revision=127208 ) are
updated?

b.