One integrator told the INQ today: “The Intel compilers are by far the best for optimising X86 but of course do not recognise an AMD Opteron.”
He continued: “The Opteron has SSE2 support, but to get a binary calling SSE2 one has to compile the binary on a Xeon machine. Move the binary over to the Opteron box and it flies.” Further – the integrator, who sells Intel server machines too, he claimed that the SMP performance is excellent on the Opteron platform. He said: “Typical SMP benchmarks in HPC show about a 30% gain with 2 CPUs over one on a Xeon/P4 platform. The same tests on Opteron show an 80% gain”.
Cross-compiling: It’s not just for the embedded market anymore.