You see.. the x86 chips have 7 usable registers: ax, cx, dx, bx, si,di, bp
thats not very much compared to other architectures...
saving one of them is a paramount gain, since register-arithmetic
is MUCH MUCH MUCH faster on pentium/ppro machines.
This is not much of a problem on alphas or other "sane"
architectures...
I agree, though, that register allocation and loop optimizations
of gcc are terrible, and there are many horrible hacks in gcc :)
When will global-alloc be re-written? ;*)
bye,
Marc
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for a pentium-optimizing gcc, look at http://www.goof.com/pcg
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---==---(_)__ __ ____ __ Marc Lehmann
--==---/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / mlehmann@hildesheim.sgh-net.de
-=====/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ pcg@goof.com
The choice of a GNU generation