RE: Re[2]: [avr-gcc-list] Re: GCC-AVR Update (20082003)

[James Dabbs]

> An  Atmel  engineer  here in Germany I spoke to on the phone yesterday
confirmed  that  gcc  indeed
> is "a really nice compiler" for AVR. But frankly  I  think  it  would take
one order of magnitude less
> bugs and maybe  a 1/3 or 1/2 cut in code size on gcc's part (impossible I
know) to  really start sucking
> away customers from IAR and stir things up at Atmel.  With  regard  to
bugs I'm not so sure, but with
> code size I'd have to quote grand ma: "Not gonna happen". ;)

This was not my experience.  I evaluated IAR (for a project that now seems
to be defunct) and it was a really nice environment and it had a good
debugger.  But the compiler output in my case from IAR was *bigger* than
GCC, and in fact wouldn't fit into the part.  This was with the IAR
optimizer on full blast, favoring small code, compiling C++ source.  Also a
section of code (the XTEA encryption algorithm) caused IAR to emit bad code
at maximum optimization, while GCC dealt with it.

I also think that GCC's inline assembler, in extended mode, can't be beat.
Especially with a little part like the AVR and an understanding of the ABI,
you can really pick out and optimize problem spots.