[jeffbee]

Clang generates the shortest of these if you target sandybridge, or x86-64-v3, or later. The real article that's buried in this article is that compilers target k8-generic unless you tell them otherwise, and the features and cost model of opteron are obsolete.

Always specify your target.

[josephg]

Yep. Adding "-C target-cpu=native" to rustc on my desktop computer consistently gets a ~10-15% performance boost compared to the default target. The default target is extremely conservative. As far as I can tell, it doesn't take advantage of any CPU features added in the last 20 years. (The k8 came out in 2003.)

[wongarsu]

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has upgraded their default target to x86-64-v2 and is considering switching to x86-64-v3 for RHEL 10 (which should release around 2026?). I'd take that as a sign that those might be reasonable choices for newly released software.

Some linux distros also give you the option to either get a version compatible with ancient hardware or the optimized x86-64-v3 version, which seems like a good compromise.

[jeffbee]

Those Gentoo people were onto something.

[alexey-salmin]

Funny that it stopped being the case for a while around 2006. AMD64 became widespread while also being very new, closing the gap between "default" and "native".

[skykooler]

Of course, gentoo just started using prebuilt packages a few months ago…

[x1f604]

Even with -march=x86-64-v4 at -O3 the compiler still generates fewer lines of assembly for the incorrect clamp compared to the correct clamp for this "realistic" code:

https://godbolt.org/z/hd44KjMMn