SPEC CPU2006 Flags Description for the Intel(R) Compiler v10.0

The -fast option enhances execution speed across the entire program by including the following options that can improve run-time performance:

-O3   (maximum speed and high-level optimizations)

-ipo (enables interprocedural optimizations across files)

-xT  (generate code specialized for Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo processors, Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad processors and Intel(R) Xeon(R) processors with SSSE3)

-no-prec-div (disable -prec-div) where -prec-div improves precision of FP divides (some speed impact)

To override one of the options set by /fast, specify that option after the -fast option on the command line. The exception is the xT or QxT option which can't be overridden. The options set by /fast may change from release to release.

Instrument program for profiling for the first phase of two-phase profile guided otimization. This instrumentation gathers information about a program's execution paths and data values but does not gather information from hardware performance counters. The profile instrumentation also gathers data for optimizations which are unique to profile-feedback optimization.

Instructs the compiler to produce a profile-optimized executable and merges available dynamic information (.dyn) files into a pgopti.dpi file. If you perform multiple executions of the instrumented program, -prof_use merges the dynamic information files again and overwrites the previous pgopti.dpi file. Without any other options, the current directory is searched for .dyn files

enable the auto-parallelizer to generate multi-threaded code for loops that can be safely executed in parallel

Enables O2 optimizations plus more aggressive optimizations, such as prefetching, scalar replacement, and loop and memory access transformations. Enables optimizations for maximum speed, such as:
- Loop unrolling, including instruction scheduling
- Code replication to eliminate branches
- Padding the size of certain power-of-two arrays to allow more efficient cache use.
On IA-32 and Intel EM64T processors, when O3 is used with options -ax or -x (Linux) or with options /Qax or /Qx (Windows), the compiler performs more aggressive data dependency analysis than for O2, which may result in longer compilation times.
The O3 optimizations may not cause higher performance unless loop and memory access transformations take place. The optimizations may slow down code in some cases compared to O2 optimizations.
The O3 option is recommended for applications that have loops that heavily use floating-point calculations and process large data sets. On IA-32 Windows platforms, -O3 sets the following:

/GF (/Qvc7 and above), /Gf (/Qvc6 and below), and /Ob2

Specifies the level of inline function expansion.

Ob0 - Disables inlining of user-defined functions. Note that statement functions are always inlined.

Ob1 - Enables inlining when an inline keyword or an inline attribute is specified. Also enables inlining according to the C++ language.

Ob2 - Enables inlining of any function at the compiler's discretion.

This option enables read only string-pooling optimization.

This option enables read/write string-pooling optimization.

Enables optimizations for speed. This is the generally recommended optimization level. This option also enables:
- Inlining of intrinsics
- Intra-file interprocedural optimizations, which include:
- inlining
- constant propagation
- forward substitution
- routine attribute propagation
- variable address-taken analysis
- dead static function elimination
- removal of unreferenced variables
- The following capabilities for performance gain:
- constant propagation
- copy propagation
- dead-code elimination
- global register allocation
- global instruction scheduling and control speculation
- loop unrolling
- optimized code selection
- partial redundancy elimination
- strength reduction/induction variable simplification
- variable renaming
- exception handling optimizations
- tail recursions
- peephole optimizations
- structure assignment lowering and optimizations
- dead store elimination

On IA-32 Windows platforms, -O2 sets the following:

/Og, /Oi-, /Os, /Oy, /Ob2, /GF (/Qvc7 and above), /Gf (/Qvc6 and below), /Gs, and /Gy.

Disables inline expansion of all intrinsic functions.

This option disables stack-checking for routines with 4096 bytes of local variables and compiler temporaries.

Allows use of EBP as a general-purpose register in optimizations.

This option tells the compiler to separate functions into COMDATs for the linker.

This option enables most speed optimizations, but disables some that increase code size for a small speed benefit.

This option enables global optimizations.

Enables optimizations for speed and disables some optimizations that
increase code size and affect speed.
To limit code size, this option:
- Enables global optimization; this includes data-flow analysis, code motion, strength reduction and test replacement, split-lifetime analysis, and instruction scheduling.
- Disables intrinsic recognition and intrinsics inlining.
The O1 option may improve performance for applications with very large code size, many branches, and execution time not dominated by code within loops.
On IA-32 Windows platforms, -O1 sets the following:

/Qunroll0, /Oi-, /Op-, /Oy, /Gy, /Os, /GF (/Qvc7 and above), /Gf (/Qvc6 and below), /Ob2, and /Og

Tells the compiler the maximum number of times to unroll loops. Use n=0 to disable loop unroller.

Disables conformance to the ANSI C and IEEE 754 standards for floating-point arithmetic.

Code is optimized for Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo processors, Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad processors and Intel(R) Xeon(R) processors with SSSE3. The resulting code may contain unconditional use of features that are not supported on other processors. This option also enables new optimizations in addition to Intel processor-specific optimizations including advanced data layout and code restructuring optimizations to improve memory accesses for Intel processors.

Do not use this option if you are executing a program on a processor that is not an Intel processor. If you use this option on a non-compatible processor to compile the main program (in Fortran) or the function main() in C/C++, the program will display a fatal run-time error if they are executed on unsupported processors.

enable multi-file Interprocedural Optimizations (between files)

improve speed of floating-point divides and disable improved precision of floating-point divides

prevents linking with shared libraries

do not link against Fortran main object Used when linking Fortran objects with C main program

Invoke the Intel C compiler for EM64T

Invoke the Intel C++ compiler for EM64T

Invoke the Intel Fortran compiler for EM64T