16 Aug
2012
16 Aug
'12
1 p.m.
On 16 Aug 2012 at 9:19, geneb wrote:
Watcom C was always the choice of game developers that
wanted really
good performance. It's my understanding that the Watcom optimizer was
pretty much unparalleled until the last decade or so.
It could be a matter of to-may-toe vs. to-mah-toe.
Around 1994, I was really in the market for a good 32-bit C, so I
bought every compiler I could find for Windows/DOS. I was appalled
at Watcom's poor optimization in 32-bit mode and put the whole thing
aside in favor of, eventually, Microsoft (which I'd been using since
it was Lattice C.
My test consisted of a few small programs that tested common
optimizations, such as common subexpression elimination, removal of
invariant expressions from loops, reduction in strength, dead
variable removal, bottom-of-loop prefetch, and so on. I examined
the generated code, but did not run any timed benchmarks.
About two years ago, I gave away the almost-unused boxed set of
Watcom C that I'd purchased. I saw no reason to hang onto it.
FWIW,
Chuck