[aleph_minus_one]

> Hmm, why would you need to optimize a benchmark for something? Generally it's the other way round.

It had always been both ways. This is why there exist(ed) quite a lot of people who have/had serious thoughts whether [some benchmark] actually measures the performance of the e.g. CPU or the quality of the compiler.

The "truce" that was adopted concerning these very heated discussions was that a great CPU is of much less value if programmers are incapable of making use of its power.

Examples that evidence the truth of this "truce" [pun intended]:

- Sega Saturn (very hard to make use of its power)

- PlayStation 3 (Cell processor)

- Intel Itanium, which (besides some other problems) needed a super-smart compiler (which never existed) so that programs could make use of its potential

- in the last years: claims that specific AMD GPUs are as fast as or even faster than NVidia GPUs (also: for the same cost) for GPGPU tasks. Possibly true, but CUDA makes it easier to make use of the power of the NVidia GPU.

[astrange]

> - Intel Itanium, which (besides some other problems) needed a super-smart compiler (which never existed) so that programs could make use of its potential

Well, no such thing is possible. Memory access and branch prediction patterns are too dynamic for a compiler to be able to schedule basically anything ahead of time.

A JIT with a lot of instrumentation could do somewhat better, but it'd be very expensive.