LLVM Clang 16 vs. GCC 13 Compiler Performance On Intel Raptor Lake

For those wondering how the recent releases of the Clang 16 and GCC 13 are competing for the fastest generated binaries of these leading open-source compilers, here is a fresh round of benchmarks from an Intel Core i9 13900K "Raptor Lake" system looking at the performance for a variety of C/C++ workloads built under each of these compilers.

In this article is a look at the GCC 13 vs. LLVM Clang 16 compiler performance on Raptor Lake as Intel's latest-generation desktop processors. A similar GCC 13 vs. LLVM Clang 16 compiler benchmark comparison will be happening soon on AMD Zen 4 as well, with the AMD znver4 target being new to GCC 13.1 and Clang 16.0.

This round of testing was focused on the performance of the resulting binaries generated by each compiler. Both compilers were tested when building the software under test with "-O3 -march=native -flto" for using the higher -O3 optimization level, catering to the Intel Raptor Lake CPU under test, and employing link-time optimizations.

This is just intended to offer a quick look at the current GCC vs. Clang compiler performance using Fedora Workstation 38.