Compiler Speed Trials

[boriel]

Here's the latest with 1.3.0 s971:
...
We were chasing zip2's 0.46s target and hisoft basic's 0.5s target on BM7 - but we seem to have lost the speed gain from the last test.
Technically the slowest iteration for a few cycles. Bugfixes are unfortunately making the code a little bit more convoluted, I think.

Could be. I've changed the FP scheme to consume less (much less) memory, but it's slowest. SHL is also a few T-states slower (the bugfix you pointed). It's my bet that it's related to FP routines. Did you use Float or Fixed? I'm still working in alternative Fast Floating Point (yes, based on your ideas, and a FP routine I'm programming).