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Intel Updates C++ and Fortran Compilers


Libraries now included with compiler purchase

By Alex Handy
June 15, 2007 — 
Intel has decided that it’s time to refresh the packaging of its compilers. The company released version 10 of its C++ and Fortran compilers in early June, and for the first time it has decided to bundle some of its libraries with the compilers.

In another first for the company, all of the compilers in the lineup are 64-bit-capable, ahead of the release of Mac OS X 10.5, and as a bonus, Intel’s Fortran compiler now includes a free copy of Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005.

The bundled libraries include support for a variety of modern development concerns, such as building video codecs and dealing with multithreaded applications. James Reinders, director of marketing for Intel software developer products division, said that the compiler team at Intel tried to insert as many optimizations as possible into the code to save developers time and energy.

Those optimizations ended up being a boon for the Intel developers as well. Reinders claimed that, in their efforts to bring vectorization and loop parallelization capabilities into the compiler, the team inadvertently made the product faster, simpler and more stable.

“We came up with this breakthrough optimizer design. You want the compiler to be able to automatically take advantage of [multimedia instruction sets such as] SSE3 or the forthcoming SSE4, or MMX. That’s all built into our compiler, with vectorization. You can automatically create a program that runs off and takes advantage of multicore,” said Reinders of the compiler’s new abilities.

“Anything the compiler can do [to optimize a program] is very useful,” Reinders added. We thought this would solve some problems, but it worked a little better than we expected. It’s given us a good performance boost; it ended up simplifying our design in a way. It’s faster and more reliable. Our compiler is able to examine a program and not only find ways to exploit SSE3 and SSE4 really well, but it’s able to create additional threads for the program, and able to do them together and optimize it correctly. It not only speeds up C++ and Fortran, but it made our libraries faster as well.”

For Fortran users, Intel has begun to implement the first layer of Fortran 2003 specifications into its compiler. While Reinders said that the company has yet to implement all of the changes from Fortran 2003, it is beginning down the path to full compatibility with this release.

Now included with each compiler are a selection of Intel’s libraries. These include the company’s performance libraries, its math kernel libraries and some of its integrated performance primitives. Reinders said that all of these libraries and compilers are available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. Intel has added support for Windows Vista and Fedora Core 6 in the compiler refresh.

Additionally, Intel is offering its first student-focused compiler bundle with the version 10 release. Although the software costs US$599 for the C++ compiler and libraries, and $699 for the Windows and Macintosh versions of its Fortran compilers, the company is offering a student package through its resellers, where $129 will get students a copy of either compiler, the included libraries and a selection of Intel’s analysis tools.


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