Intel Icelake CPU Target Patch Published For GCC

While it was just days ago Intel got around to posting the patch for introducing -march=cannonlake support for GCC, this weekend they already posted the patch for its successor with the new Icelake target.

Icelake is Intel's successor to Cannonlake that likely won't be released until 2019. These 10nm+ CPUs are expected to feature a "Gen 11" graphics processor over Gen 10 coming with Cannonlake. But overall details on Icelake are still scarce given it's a ways out with Cannonlake even not here yet.

The patch would simply land the initial -march=icelake support. This patch is likely coming so soon now since GCC 8 feature development is ending later this month.

The patch does confirm Icelake supports GFNI / Galois Field NI / Galois Field Affine Transformation for helping with crypto. At least for now with this patch GFNI and AVX512VPOPCNTDQ are the only additions compared to the Cannonlake target. But expect more Icelake compiler tuning and work to happen over the next year.