[BiO BB] Unix or Linux? Compilers

[Jan-Christoph Westermann]

Ho-Leung Ng wrote:
> 
>      Many labs use Alphas because of their superlative performance, but
> the latest Athlons may be faster now. Linux is probably the way to go, but

Alpha is 64bit technology, it is still faster than any 32bit processor
(sometimes depending on application). SuSE sells it's Linux distribution
for Alpha processors with the Compaq C/C++ and Fortran compilers. They
are said to be among the best compilers available.

> you may want to look into commercial compilers because gcc can be as much
> as 50% slower than commercial alternatives. Intel has just released
> C/C++/Fortran compilers for linux that are free for noncommercial use.
> I've heard they are very impressive.

The Intel compilers are not compatible with certain GNU extensions
for C/C++, so the Linux kernel doesn't compile with it (afaik). If you
use ansi C/C++ the might be okay, they are avalabble for Itanium too, or
they will be soon. BTW Intel bought the Alpha processor design,
including 
compiler technology from Compaq.

jcw

-- 
Jan-C. Westermann      jwester at sgi1.chemie.uni-hamburg.de
Nota bene: wenn Word für Längeres geeignet wäre, würde es 
schließlich nicht Word, sondern Sentence, Page oder 
Article heißen ;-)               Matthias Mühlich in dctt