[trekkin]

I implement high-performance software systems in C++ as my day job. The software has to compile and run on Linux, Solaris, and AIX. The same code is 2x slower on AIX (Power) and 3x-5x slower on Solaris (Sparc) than on Linux (x86). So say whatever you want about theoretical differences in architectures, but in the real world Sparc and Power systems are absolutely not competitive, both on price (absolute $$, and per CPU) and performance (per CPU - they do have more cpu cores, usually).

[Someone1234]

That's just a circular way of saying "x86 is more popular, therefore better." Which doesn't address the person aboves' point that x86 is inferior in terms of its design.

Of course x86 is going to be faster per dollar spent. One is mass market (x86-64) and the other two are hugely niche (Sparc and Power). Plus the Linux kernel has by far the most human-hours spent on its development relative to every other operating system in the world.

There's also a reason why some of x86's market share has been eaten up by ARM. Moving from x86 to ARM was hugely expensive by all measures, but it was worthwhile because x86 was so wasteful.

[mbreese]

It's not just "x86 is more popular, therefore better." It's that the performance of x86 was better than SPARC or Power. Regardless of the cost of the chip, performance is what is really important here. In some instances, performance per watt is more important, but either way... it's performance that's key, not market forces driving cost savings.

I haven't had much experience with SPARC, but I've done some work on Power systems (long ago). Back then (10-ish years ago), Power chips were more powerful than their x86 contemporaries. But at some point, that relationship switched.

However, I wonder how much of this is the chip, and how much is the tooling. Its been awhile since I've needed to think about C/C++ compiling, but from what I remember, the Intel compiler produced (slightly) faster binaries than gcc. Now this is where popularity could prove to be decisive... if the compiler that the OP uses works for x86, SPARC, and Power, how much do you suspect each of those architectures has been optimized? Even if the non-x86 chip itself is capable of running faster than x86, if the toolchain isn't similarly optimized, they could end up having worse performance.

[sudowhodoido]

I agree entirely with you. However that doesn't invalidate my point.