In article <1992Aug21.081823.571@donau.et.tudelft.nl>, wolff@zen.et.tudelft.nl (Rogier Wolff) writes:
|> davidsen@ariel.crd.GE.COM (william E Davidsen) writes:
|> 
|> >  If more instructions and bigger size really improved performance we'd
|> >all leave -O off our compiles, right. Therefore it's an interesting
|> >little puzzle.
|> >-- 
|> >bill davidsen, GE Corp. R&D Center; Box 8; Schenectady NY 12345
|> >    I admit that when I was in school I wrote COBOL. But I didn't compile.
|> 
|> That's what optimizing is all about: The only difference between GCC codee
|> for 486 and 386 is that in the 486 code some extra NOPs are added.
|> 

It is a little bit more than that. Some code sequences are faster for 486.
Get gcc-2.2.2.tar.Z and read i386.md for details.

|> This will make the branch targets align on 16 byte boundaries, which will
|> improve cache performance.
|> 
|>                                              Roger


H.J.