gcc-4.5.0 Success Story with Freecell Solver

[Amos Shapira]

There was an item on slashdot about LLVM project, have you tested it?

On 6/14/10, Shlomi Fish <shlomif at iglu.org.il> wrote:
>
> ----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
>
> Subject: gcc-4.5.0 Success Story with Freecell Solver
> Date: Sunday 13 Jun 2010, 17:21:00
> From: Shlomi Fish <shlomif at iglu.org.il>
> To: Freecell Solving Discussions <fc-solve-discuss at yahoogroups.com>
>
>
> Executive summary: I have built installed gcc-4.5.0 and after Freecell
> Solver
> ran faster, after I compiled it with gcc-4.5.0.
>
> I've recently gone over my LWN.net ( http://lwn.net/ ) backlog and saw this
> feature about gcc-4.5.0:
>
> http://lwn.net/Articles/387122/
>
> It mentioned the "Link-Time Optimisation" feature (using the -flto flag)
> which
> piqued my interest on how well it will work for Freecell Solver (
> http://fc-solve.berlios.de/ ). So I set out to try it out.
>
> I downloaded gcc-4.5.0 (which took a while due to the large archive size and
> problems in finding a fast mirror), unpacked it, and read the INSTALL/
> notes.
> After running the appropriate ./configure call, I typed make and waited. For
> many hours. But it built up successfully, and I was able to install it.
>
> I used the following command, which I've stored in a shell script:
>
> [shell]
> #!/bin/bash
> ~/Download/unpack/prog/gcc/gcc-4.5.0/configure \
> 	--prefix="$HOME"/apps/prog/gcc-4.5.0
> [/shell]
>
> After installing gcc, I patched fc-solve's CMakeLists.txt to check for the
> availability of the -flto flag and also enable it at link-time. This went
> well, and I benchmarked Freecell Solver after being compiled with it.
>
> The end result was that it made the standard Microsoft FreeCell 32,000
> boards
> benchmark take 91.0577080249786 seconds instead of 93.6305630207062 seconds
> ,
> an improvement of over 2.5 seconds and of roughly 2.75%. (Going down to
> 351.43
> boards per second). So it seems like an impressive gain.
>
> That was on my Pentium 4-2.4 GHz stationary machine running Mandriva Linux
> Cooker.
>
> Then I set out to do the same on my newer Core Duo x86-64 laptop also
> running
> Mandriva Cooker. I installed gcc this time restricting the
> --enable-languages
> to c and c++ so it will take less time. After installing it in a prefix, I
> realised CMake could not find its -flto flag . As it turns out, it was not
> enabled because gcc-4.5.0 could not find libelf-devel. Installing it
> resolved
> it.
>
> The difference there was less dramatic than on my P4 machine - about 0.5
> seconds were saved out of about 35 seconds running time. However, in
> general,
> I'm happy with the results.
>
> Thanks to all the gcc developers for their hard work on making gcc better,
> including improving the performance of many programs.
>
> Regards,
>
> 	Shlomi Fish
>
> --
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
> Original Riddles - http://www.shlomifish.org/puzzles/
>
> God considered inflicting XSLT as the tenth plague of Egypt, but then
> decided against it because he thought it would be too evil.
>
> Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
>
> -----------------------------------------
> --
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> Shlomi Fish       http://www.shlomifish.org/
> http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/ways_to_do_it.html
>
> God considered inflicting XSLT as the tenth plague of Egypt, but then
> decided against it because he thought it would be too evil.
>
> Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
>
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