IBM Announces Mac OS X Compilers

[MacRumors]

IBM has announced the final versions of the XL C, XL C++, and Fortran compilers for Mac OS X.

These PowerPC 970 (G5) processor optimized compilers were previously been released in Beta form and showed promising performance advantages.

[yoman]

How much improved performance is there in real world applications.

[Veldek]

Great! Now one can only hope that the majority of apps will be compiled using these compilers. I bet Photoshop CS could see a huge boost in performance for example.

[vitrector]

new compilers for OS X, by IBM, should boost developer confidence...
Supercomputers, V-Tech, X-grid
New x-serves
Downloadable and "music in your pocket" dominance

it is shaping up to be a good year for Apple!!!!

[EyeMyke]

404 on the C++ link

[MikeAtari]

Will we have to wait till next year's 10.4 or could Apple release a new build of Panther?

[MattMass]

This is a great step in the right direction towards more optimized PPC code. GCC is a truely great compiler, but there was never any doubt in my mind that it was not the most optimized. It just stands to reason that if you build specifically for the PPC ISA is should do very well. I'm really excited to start seeing some comparisons.

But, does anyone know if/when these compilers will support Obj-C? Without this functionality I won't be able to use them myself, and I suspect that many developers will be in the same boat.

[macrumors12345]

Originally posted by MikeAtari
Will we have to wait till next year's 10.4 or could Apple release a new build of Panther?

Unless the XL compilers can be integrated into the XCode IDE, I seriously doubt that you will see Apple using them anytime soon. Let's be realistic here.

[etep]

Are the prices stated somewhere? Did't see'em anywhere at least for the Fortran compiler (or am I going blind?).

[ITR 81]

Originally posted by MattMass
This is a great step in the right direction towards more optimized PPC code. GCC is a truely great compiler, but there was never any doubt in my mind that it was not the most optimized. It just stands to reason that if you build specifically for the PPC ISA is should do very well. I'm really excited to start seeing some comparisons.

But, does anyone know if/when these compilers will support Obj-C? Without this functionality I won't be able to use them myself, and I suspect that many developers will be in the same boat.

XL supports Objective C.
This has already been covered on slashdot.

In some old beta tests of XL.
It was showing a 30-45% performance increase on the G4.

Either way any app compiled will it will see a big performance increase.

[ITR 81]

Originally posted by etep
Are the prices stated somewhere? Did't see'em anywhere at least for the Fortran compiler (or am I going blind?).

It's $499 for a single seat license which is over $500+ cheaper the the complier for AIX.

[kherdin]

Unless the XL compilers can be integrated into the XCode IDE, I seriously doubt that you will see Apple using them anytime soon. Let's be realistic here.

Actually, the XL compilers integrate very well into Xcode. Since most (all?) command syntax is the same in XL as GCC, all Xcode needs to do is change the commands used, which I believe is configureable. The actual IBM site provides more information on the integration with Xcode.

On another note, wouldn't be great if Apple licenses the compilers from IBM and shipped them for free to developers along with Xcode? I mean sure, Apple would have to pay a hefty fee to IBM for this, but as a result it would get all Mac OS X applications running 1.5-2.5x faster (these numbers are from benchmarks someone took w/ the betas of the compilers, and is not specific to G5 - the speed improvements are significant for the G4 and G3 chips as well).

Think about, if Apple shipped these with Xcode, that would be an equivalent of doubling the processor speed of all Macs, as all apps would (eventually) get compiled with these, and this would equate to a great perception of Macs in general by the public.

[ITR 81]

I wonder why anyone would vote negative on this??

[uberman42]

Originally posted by ITR 81
I wonder why anyone would vote negative on this??

Fat Fingers or ignorance

[yamabushi]

Great news. Now hopefully they will get used. Integration into Xcode would be awesome.

I would also like to see some performance benchmarks for a recompiled Panther. Who wants to give it a try?

[NusuniAdmin]

Originally posted by uberman42
Fat Fingers or ignorance

Or a jealous windows weenee

[denjeff]

I wonder if the XCode distributed compiling will work if you integrate this compiler... I suppose so. Would boost compilation time as well...

[MikeAtari]

Don't know what I'm talking about, but only Apple can recompile Panther.
I wonder if we could recompile Darwin with this tool.

[yamabushi]

This article was mentioned in MacBytes. Recompiling Darwin/OSX

4 parts to this article so far.

[etep]

Originally posted by ITR 81
It's $499 for a single seat license which is over $500+ cheaper the the complier for AIX.

Well, even then that's $499 more than the Intel compiler I'm using at the moment... I was hoping IBM would offer a version for free as well (even if it would come without technical support etc. like the Intel one).

[pmd]

Originally posted by denjeff
I wonder if the XCode distributed compiling will work if you integrate this compiler... I suppose so. Would boost compilation time as well...

Well, Xcode's distributed compile system is just distcc - http://distcc.samba.org/ - which is designed to work with gcc. However, it can work with other compilers if they treat their command-line options in the same way gcc does.

The IBM page says that their compiler is compatible with gcc's command-line options, so it ought to work.

[macshark]

I think some of us are getting a bit too excited about this. I have no doubt that IBM's new compilers will increase the SPEC results, etc. for the G5, however, I wouldn't expect huge performance increases for most real world applications. Despite being free, gcc is still a very good compiler and many people have been working on G4/G5 optimizations for gcc for several years.

[Stoffel]

Originally posted by etep
Well, even then that's $499 more than the Intel compiler I'm using at the moment... I was hoping IBM would offer a version for free as well (even if it would come without technical support etc. like the Intel one).

Yeah, I was hoping that too. On x86 there is the free personal educational license for the icc/ifc. A free intel compiler for MacOS X would be really cool, especially for the dual g5 as the gcc does not support OpenMP.

[kherdin]

Originally posted by yamabushi
Great news. Now hopefully they will get used. Integration into Xcode would be awesome.

I would also like to see some performance benchmarks for a recompiled Panther. Who wants to give it a try?

Well, unless you somehow have access to Panther source code (ie you work at Apple on Mac OS X), you can't really recompile Panther. Panther is not open source - Darwin, the underlying layer is however, but recompiling Darwin, then managing to get the existing Panther closed source stuff to run on top of it is a challenge few would attempt, and even fewer would succeed at. :P

[sw1tcher]

Wow! I just read Apple's press release saying that they posted a $63 million profit for Q1 2004.

But what I found most surprising was that "Apple shipped 829 thousand Macintosh units during the quarter, up 12 percent from the year-ago quarter, as well as 733 thousand iPod units, up 235 percent from the year-ago quarter." Up 235 percent!!!

That's f@ckin' amazing!