Inexpensive ARM compilers

Mar 05, 2005 21 Replies
R

Paul,

you got it to the point (the libs) where the weakest point of GNU is. The standard library generates slightly humongus code.

AFAIK, the Keil version you used is actually a GNU C-Compiler with the Standard LIB, embedded in the Keil uVision. There is a new compiler, non-GNU which generates much better code and has its own libraries.

As a compiler, not looking at the libraries, numbers that I have seen compiling some benchmarks ourselves were in the range 20-30 larger than best in class (was ARM about 18 months ago). Nevertheless, using the GNU Libs, it was more than a factor of 2.

Summary: the secret is mostly in the libraries

Robertus

Paul Curtis wrote:

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D

Hmm, Ulf references -30% on the kernel, and I think the kernel doesn't utilize the "C standard library" much compared to a user app, so the gain might be in "core" code optimization.

In fairness to this thread, I should have stated that "my informal comparisons" used compilers for other (i.e., non-ARM) RISC architectures (e.g., PowerPC, i960, and 29000) and are now dated. For example MetaWare's PPC compiler *was* pretty good compared to GCC's code generation. Is it still? I don't know.

If GCC has reeled in some of the gap, I'm happy because the last two and the current projects are at the Linux bootloader/kernel/driver level with me still using GCC.

-- Dan Henry

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