POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.unix : Performance of GNU vs. Intel C++ compiler on AMD64 Server Time
31 Oct 2024 20:05:46 EDT (-0400)
  Performance of GNU vs. Intel C++ compiler on AMD64 (Message 1 to 6 of 6)  
From: clipka
Subject: Performance of GNU vs. Intel C++ compiler on AMD64
Date: 30 Oct 2009 16:06:45
Message: <4aeb4755$1@news.povray.org>
In case anyone is interested to know:

On my AMD Phenom X4 9650 2.3GHz 6 GB Debian Linux system, up until today 
I used to compile POV-Ray with either the Intel icpc 11.0 compiler 
suite, or (very rarely) with GNU g++ 4.1.1.

Benchmarking results used to be clearly in favor of the Intel compiler, 
with typical differences in execution time of 10% and more.

I'm just testing with g++ 4.3.2 now, and (as I would have expected) the 
GNU suite has obviously improved. While it is still a tad behind on 
average, it quite obviously plays in the same league now as the 11.0 
version of Intel's compiler.


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: Performance of GNU vs. Intel C++ compiler on AMD64
Date: 31 Oct 2009 15:03:02
Message: <4aec89e6$1@news.povray.org>
clipka schrieb:

> I'm just testing with g++ 4.3.2 now, and (as I would have expected) the 
> GNU suite has obviously improved. While it is still a tad behind on 
> average, it quite obviously plays in the same league now as the 11.0 
> version of Intel's compiler.

Some interesting side notes on this:

- GNU g++ 4.3.2 compiled POV-Ray is still comparatively slow for simple 
scenes that don't take long to render anyway; this may adversely affect 
performance when rendering animations (I didn't test it though, and it 
may depend on whether the slowdown is during program startup, parsing, 
or whatever).

- A /severe/ difference in performance can be seen with scenes using 
crackle pattern; for instance, the sample scenes "crackle2.pov" and 
"crackle3.pov" take twice as long with the g++ 4.3.2 version than with 
the icpc 11.1 version.

- Photons paint a totally different picture: When compiled with Intel 
icpc (both versions 11.0 and 11.1), POV-Ray has been segfaulting on me 
sporadically (but quite frequently) ever since, with any scene that uses 
photons. (We're talking about Debian Linux, both 4.0t5 "Etch" and 5.0.3 
"Lenny", running on an AMD Phenom X4 9650.) When compiled with GNU g++ 
(both versions 4.1.1 and 4.3.2), I have never encountered any such 
crashes so far. I actually suspect some bogus optimization here.


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From: nemesis
Subject: Re: Performance of GNU vs. Intel C++ compiler on AMD64
Date: 1 Nov 2009 10:56:10
Message: <4aedaf9a@news.povray.org>
clipka wrote:
> In case anyone is interested to know:
> 
> On my AMD Phenom X4 9650 2.3GHz 6 GB Debian Linux system, up until today 
> I used to compile POV-Ray with either the Intel icpc 11.0 compiler 
> suite, or (very rarely) with GNU g++ 4.1.1.
> 
> Benchmarking results used to be clearly in favor of the Intel compiler, 
> with typical differences in execution time of 10% and more.
> 
> I'm just testing with g++ 4.3.2 now, and (as I would have expected) the 
> GNU suite has obviously improved. While it is still a tad behind on 
> average, it quite obviously plays in the same league now as the 11.0 
> version of Intel's compiler.

good to know!  Send a note to the gcc devs informing it gets thumbs up 
from the povray devs... ;)


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From: nemesis
Subject: Re: Performance of GNU vs. Intel C++ compiler on AMD64
Date: 1 Nov 2009 10:58:26
Message: <4aedb022@news.povray.org>
clipka wrote:
> - Photons paint a totally different picture: When compiled with Intel 
> icpc (both versions 11.0 and 11.1), POV-Ray has been segfaulting on me 
> sporadically (but quite frequently) ever since, with any scene that uses 
> photons. (We're talking about Debian Linux, both 4.0t5 "Etch" and 5.0.3 
> "Lenny", running on an AMD Phenom X4 9650.) When compiled with GNU g++ 
> (both versions 4.1.1 and 4.3.2), I have never encountered any such 
> crashes so far. I actually suspect some bogus optimization here.

and probably hard to find... :P


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: Performance of GNU vs. Intel C++ compiler on AMD64
Date: 1 Nov 2009 16:20:12
Message: <4aedfb8c$1@news.povray.org>
nemesis schrieb:
> clipka wrote:
>> - Photons paint a totally different picture: When compiled with Intel 
>> icpc (both versions 11.0 and 11.1), POV-Ray has been segfaulting on me 
>> sporadically (but quite frequently) ever since, with any scene that 
>> uses photons. (We're talking about Debian Linux, both 4.0t5 "Etch" and 
>> 5.0.3 "Lenny", running on an AMD Phenom X4 9650.) When compiled with 
>> GNU g++ (both versions 4.1.1 and 4.3.2), I have never encountered any 
>> such crashes so far. I actually suspect some bogus optimization here.
> 
> and probably hard to find... :P

You bet. I tried to track it down months ago, but it would escape all my 
attempts to put a finger on it, so finally I decided to postpone it 
until someone else would complain as well. Who knows - maybe it's even 
limited to my particular machine.


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From: Quietman
Subject: Re: Performance of GNU vs. Intel C++ compiler on AMD64
Date: 2 Nov 2009 18:49:41
Message: <4aef7015$1@news.povray.org>
I just upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 x64 which uses gcc 4.4.1. I also used boost 
1.38. Compiled and ran Povray 3.7 beta 34 with no problems. I run the 
allanim and allscenes scripts to give it a good run and it is flying through 
them, very impressed.

"clipka" <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote in message 
news:4aeb4755$1@news.povray.org...
> In case anyone is interested to know:
>
> On my AMD Phenom X4 9650 2.3GHz 6 GB Debian Linux system, up until today I 
> used to compile POV-Ray with either the Intel icpc 11.0 compiler suite, or 
> (very rarely) with GNU g++ 4.1.1.
>
> Benchmarking results used to be clearly in favor of the Intel compiler, 
> with typical differences in execution time of 10% and more.
>
> I'm just testing with g++ 4.3.2 now, and (as I would have expected) the 
> GNU suite has obviously improved. While it is still a tad behind on 
> average, it quite obviously plays in the same league now as the 11.0 
> version of Intel's compiler.


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