GCC 4.8 Release Brings Improved C++11, Optimizations

GCC 4.8 has been officially released today as the annual major update to the GNU Compiler Collection.

Prominent changes to GCC 4.8 include:

- Migrating the compiler's implementation to C++ rather than C.

- A brand new optimization level.

- ARM performance improvements.

- Initial compiler support for Intel Broadwell architecture and the new instruction set extensions it will present next year.

- CPU support for AMD Steamroller and Jaguar.

- Link-time optimization improvements.

- Runtime library improvements, a.k.a. libstdc++.

- ARM 64-bit / AArch64 support.

- Merging of AddressSanitizer and ThreadSanitizer, features previously found in LLVM that were developed by Google.

- Improved C++11 support and initial support for C++1y, the next C++ standard.

- Other new GCC 4.8 features.

The GCC 4.8 release was announced this morning at GNU.org. There's already been some GCC 4.8 compiler benchmarks at Phoronix, but a new round is forthcoming now that the official release is out in the wild.