Intel ARCHITECTURE IA-32 - Manual (Page 81)

General Optimization Guidelines
2
2-9
Performance Tools
Intel offers several tools that can facilitate optimizing your application’s
performance.
Intel ® C++ Compiler
Use the Intel C++ Compiler following the recommendations described
here. The Intel Compiler’s advanced optimization features provide good
performance without the need to hand-tune assembly code. However,
the following features may enhance performance even further:
• Inlined assembly
• Intrinsics, which have a one-to-one correspondence with assembly
language instructions but allow the compiler to perform register
allocation and instruction scheduling. Refer to the “Intel C++
Intrinsics Reference” section of the Intel® C++ Compiler User’s
Guide.
• C++ class libraries. Refer to the “Intel C++ Class Libraries for
SIMD Operations Reference” section of the Intel® C++ Compiler
User’s Guide.
• Vectorization in conjunction with compiler directives (pragmas).
Refer to the “Compiler Vectorization Support and Guidelines”
section of the Intel® C++ Compiler User’s Guide.
The Intel C++ Compiler can generate an executable which uses features
such as Streaming SIMD Extensions 2. The executable will maximize
performance on the current generation of IA-32 processor family (for
example, a Pentium 4 processor) and still execute correctly on older
processors. Refer to the “Processor Dispatch Support” section in the
Intel® C++ Compiler User’s Guide.