How much should I worry about the Intel C++ compiler emitting suboptimal code for AMD?

Question

We\'ve always been an Intel shop. All the developers use Intel machines, recommended platform for end users is Intel, and if end users want to run on AMD it\'s their lookou

Answer 1

At the time this thread was started, Microsoft C++ defaulted to code generation which was good in some cases for AMD and bad for Intel. Their more recent compilers default to the blend option which is good for both, particularly after both brands of CPUs had worked out their peculiar performance bugs. When I first worked at Intel, their compilers reserved some optimizations for Intel-specific architecture settings. I guess that might have been a topic of some FTC depositions, although it didn't come up in my 10 hours of testimony, and the practice was already on the way out due to convergence of optimization requirements between up to date CPU models and the need for more productive use of compiler development time. If you used one of those obsolete compilers on an up to date Intel CPU, you might see some of the same performance deficiencies.