OS News reports the recent antitrust settlement between AMD and Intel will solve the "cripple AMD" function in Intel's compiler:Here's
something you probably don't know, but really should - especially if
you're a programmer, and especially especially if you're using Intel's
compiler. It's a fact that's not widely known, but Intel's compiler
deliberately and knowingly cripples performance for non-Intel (AMD/VIA)
processors.
Agner Fog details this particularly nasty examples of Intel's
anticompetitive practices quite well. Intel's compiler can produce
different versions of pieces of code, with each version being optimised
for a specific processor and/or instruction set (SSE2, SSE3, etc.). The
system detects which CPU it's running on and chooses the optimal code
path accordingly; the CPU dispatcher, as it's called.
"However, the Intel CPU dispatcher does not only check which
instruction set is supported by the CPU, it also checks the vendor ID
string," Fog details, "If the vendor string says 'GenuineIntel' then it
uses the optimal code path. If the CPU is not from Intel then, in most
cases, it will run the slowest possible version of the code, even if
the CPU is fully compatible with a better version."
