GCC 8 vs. LLVM Clang 6 Performance At End Of Year 2017

For those wondering how the LLVM Clang vs. GCC C/C++ compiler performance is comparing as we end out 2017, here are some recent benchmarks using the latest Clang 6.0 SVN and GCC 8.0.0 compilers in a range of benchmarks.

This latest GCC vs. Clang compiler showdown was using the GCC 8.0.0 17 December compiler snapshot and LLVM Clang 6.0 SVN from 24 December. Both compilers were built in their release mode from the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS x86_64 test system. While compiling the benchmark binaries and throughout testing the CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS were maintained of "-O3 -march=skylake-avx512."

This test system where the compiler benchmarks were done this time around was an Intel Core i9 7980XE (Skylake X) CPU running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and using the Linux 4.15 kernel in P-State's performance mode. All of these C/C++ compiler benchmarks were carried out in a fully-automated and reproducible manner using the open-source Phoronix Test Suite benchmarking software.