Except that the compilers are typically mature enough where you CAN flip the switch and have SSE output instead of x87. On Mac OSX at least, gcc uses SSE by default for floating point operations.
It's like compiling for ARM and forcing codegen into Thumb mode so it looks worse performance-wise.
No, I agree that you can flip the switch. Absolutely. In gcc as well as MSVC. It's a flag, nothing more.
I just don't think you can flip the switch without also doing due diligence so far as re-testing goes. I wouldn't feel comfortable making that sort of change and just blindly shoving it into production. So it's really not "flip a switch" it's "flip a switch and re-test the entire codebase" IMO. It requires dev resources.
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Except that the compilers are typically mature enough where you CAN flip the switch and have SSE output instead of x87. On Mac OSX at least, gcc uses SSE by default for floating point operations.
It's like compiling for ARM and forcing codegen into Thumb mode so it looks worse performance-wise.
No, I agree that you can flip the switch. Absolutely. In gcc as well as MSVC. It's a flag, nothing more.
I just don't think you can flip the switch without also doing due diligence so far as re-testing goes. I wouldn't feel comfortable making that sort of change and just blindly shoving it into production. So it's really not "flip a switch" it's "flip a switch and re-test the entire codebase" IMO. It requires dev resources.