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How about Intel Fortran vs. Intel C ? How about gcc C vs. gcc Fortran ?
Hyper-optimized compiler for Intel architecture beats compiler designed to be portable to many, many target architectures? Not very shocking.
These reports are worse than useless. Any person with good understanding of computing knows that implementation plays a huge part in it. Why people wasting their time comparing speed of different programming languages while they should focus on different implementations. I guess the latter one is difficult so people all try to avoid it, and the first one is just so easy to do and everybody is doing it.
These reports are worse than useless. Any person with good understanding of computing knows that implementation plays a huge part in it. Why people wasting their time comparing speed of different programming languages while they should focus on different implementations. I guess the latter one is difficult so people all try to avoid it, and the first one is just so easy to do and everybody is doing it.
That fact stands out immensely. The Scala code and java code should be equal as the first can be written exactly like the second. Don't even see Clojure. Hate to see what times they get there.
Intel Fortran vs gcc ??? How about Intel Fortran vs. Intel C ? How about gcc C vs. gcc Fortran ? Hyper-optimized compiler for Intel architecture beats compiler designed to be portable to many, many target architectures? Not very shocking.
First, even if we take the conclusion as given, "Fortran" isn't faster than "C". The median of one set of programs, compiled with one Fortran compiler with one set of options and run on one processor, is faster than the median of another set of programs compiled with one C compiler with one set of one and run on that processor. This tells us approximately nothing.
If you only expand your consideration to include the whole distribution of programs they tested, GCC actually looks better than iFort (eg. there is a single program which ran 2x faster with iFort, but multiple programs ran more than 2x slower). Median is a spectacularly poor choice of metric, especially with so few samples in the distribution.
But also: Intel also makes a C compiler. Why wasn't that used? How were these benchmark programs chosen? Etc.
This study says close to nothing about "Fortran" and "C", or about any of the other languages involved.
With Fortran this is expected, since for language semantics the compiler can perform more assumptions compared to C, resulting into more optimizations.
With Fortran this is expected, since for language semantics the compiler can perform more assumptions compared to C, resulting into more optimizations.
For the shootout, all the source code is visible to the compiler (though at least GCC needs to be told so with a flag). So I don't think there's much more assumptions that can be made.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the shootout, all the source code is visible to the compiler (though at least GCC needs to be told so with a flag). So I don't think there's much more assumptions that can be made.
AFAIK GCC doesn't add "restrict" to pointers by itself. Fortran semantics mean that pointers are "restrict" by default.
Feel free to point out the source code in the shootout where this would somehow not be the case. Shouldn't be hard to find if you focus on the benchmarks where Fortran beats C heavily.
Additionally, the argument about restrict is flawed because it can be added to the C code too, so it can't be an advantage of Fortran.