GNU Toolset Optimized for AMD Platforms

Overview

Since 2000, AMD has been investing in performance and feature enhancements in the GNU toolchain. That includes GCC, binutils, and all of the libraries connected to these tools. The AMD GNU Tools team now has four full time employees and one consultant who are contributing to the GNU toolset on a daily basis, and additional GCC work is done in collaboration with Novell's SUSE Labs.

» Downloads

» Open Source Ethics

» Documentation

GCC Quick Reference Guide for Optimized x86 Code Generation
This is a one-page summary of GCC flags that every GCC developer should check out. Flags highlighted include those for general x86 platform optimization and several flags for AMD platforms including the AMD Family 10h or "Barcelona" processors (i.e. Quad-Core AMD Opteron™, AMD Phenom™ X4 and AMD Phenom™ X3).
»Download One-Pager for Your Evaluation (PDF)

Downloads

AMD has packaged GCC and its complementing tools in file formats suitable for deployment on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server/Desktop. A quick reference card with the most popular GCC optimization flags can be found here.

Be sure to read the installation instructions on each of these sites.

» GCC 4.2 Downloads

GCC 4.2 is intended as a performance-optimized, optional compiler that, in addition to containing the above features, also includes the below enhancements. Click here to download a copy:

C++ performance bug fixes (benefits AMD APL libraries)

Improved performance tuning for Family 10h

Vectorizer improvements

Minor bug fixes and typographical errors

Source code cleanup

» GCC 4.1.2 Downloads

GCC 4.1.2 is an upgrade to the version of GCC shipped with RHEL5 and SLES10 SP1, and adds the following additional features:

Support for SSE4a instructions introduced in the code name "Barcelona" family of AMD processors

Support of Advanced Bit Manipulation instructions

Open Source Ethics

As part of AMD's and Novell's code of software development ethics:

No generic feature or enhancement implemented shall degrade the performance of our competitors.*
All code developed by AMD and Novell and published on our web sites or incorporated into our products shall be submitted to primary source code trees.
All code submitted as part of the GNU toolchain is developed under the GNU Public License and contains no closed source components.

Documentation

* The --march= and --mtune= parameters may be used to tune an application for a specific processor. We do not recommend using these parameters on a processor other than what the application was tuned for, as this can cause performance degradation and/or application instability.