Why DMD is so slow?

[Chris Wright]

Robert Fraser wrote:
> Unknown W. Brackets wrote:
>> As everyone has said, these are problems in DMD and DMC.
>>
>> DMD is not a bad compiler, but it doesn't have all of the 
>> optimizations that some other compilers are.  For example, Microsoft's 
>> cl and Intel's icc might possibly beat gcc at this too (although they 
>> don't currently compile D code.)
>>
>> Anyway, it's a matter of priorities.  Improving the performance of DMD 
>> compiled programs is great, but making the D language work is more 
>> important.  If GDC can do a good optimization job, that's great for it 
>> imho.
> 
> Which is why I think the LLVM project is so important. Many languages -> 
> one optimizer -> many targets

GCC already offers that. On the other hand, I've read papers where 
people modified GCC for research purposes. One month spent on 
algorithms, one month on implementation, four months just learning how 
GCC works and where to insert the code. I would guess that LLVM is 
currently well factored and much more extensible.