Author: Jon Dart
Date: 12:41:40 02/02/00
Go up one level in this thread
On February 02, 2000 at 11:47:02, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: >>I have had a significant amount of trouble with the VC++ >>optimizer. Even with all the service packs installed, I have >>still seen cases where it generates bad code. It's not that > >First of all, the servicepacks didn't seem to change the compiler >at all here, only the IDE. > >Secondly, the better a compiler optimizes, the more assumptions it >has to take, the more assumptions it makes, the bigger the chance >that if there is something broken in your code that it crashes you. The service packs definitely do change the compiler. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/sp/vs6sp3/vcfixes.asp#visualc_compiler And I don't agree about the optimizer problems being due to bugs in the input code. I've looked at the assembly and seen it trashing registers that had "live" variables in them. I've also worked on x86 code generators and know how hard it is to get this stuff right (it is a lot like a chess program: instead of hashtables and extensions and null move all nastily interacting together, you have multiple optimizations, register allocations, etc. all interacting). All that said, I'd still recommend the compiler .. not everyone gets bit by the bugs and it is a well-documented and put together package. --Jon
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.