Intel C++ compiler
Ranked 16 of 18 c compilers by recommenders
People recommend it for fast, tight code on Intel chips, often beating gcc. Critics say it can handicap AMD CPUs and its defaults can cut float precision.
People recommend it for fast, tight code on Intel chips, often beating gcc. Critics say it can handicap AMD CPUs and its defaults can cut float precision.
13 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 46%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fast, tightly optimized generated code
“the intel compiler unsurprisingly generated the most close asm for the machine”
Comment from 26 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: We built a terminal-only Bluesky / AT Proto client written in Fortran” “Often it’s faster than my own instrinsics, though not always.”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “The state of SIMD in Rust in 2025” “still around working far better than gcc in many use-cases”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “A new Intel Itanium (IA-64) emulator that boots Windows”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Favors Intel, handicaps AMD CPUs
“optimised per family, included all the copies in the output and selected the worst one on AMD”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “I built a Cargo-like build tool for C/C++” “giving AMD cpu's a handicap”
Comment from 24 Nov 2025 in “A time-travelling door bug in Half Life 2” Default settings reduce float precision
“sacrifices IEEE 764 float precision and go down to ~14 digits of precision in it's defaults”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “AVX-512: First Impressions on Performance and Programmability” “it incorrectly defaults to something like -funsafe-math”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 on Hacker News Benchmark tuning and wasted effort
“Both that and the SPEC compiler shenanigans are cheating by changing the test”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “Why SWE-bench Verified no longer measures frontier coding capabilities” “money they've wasted trying to improve autovectorization passes in ICC”
Comment from 17 May 2026 in “C++26 Shipped a SIMD Library Nobody Asked For”
Other c compilers people recommend
The four most recommended other c compilers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fil-C | 160 | 60 | 73% | 13 | — | Approved |
| Claude's C Compiler | 39 | 83 | 32% | 5 | — | — |
| Visual C++ | 29 | 17 | 63% | 12 | — | — |
| Tiny C Compiler (TCC) | 22 | 3 | 88% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Intel C++ compilerThis page | 6 | 7 | 46% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
All 13 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it incorrectly defaults to something like -funsafe-math”
“they're not a magic thing that could make Itanic not-suck”
“still around working far better than gcc in many use-cases”
“money they've wasted trying to improve autovectorization passes in ICC”
“Both that and the SPEC compiler shenanigans are cheating by changing the test”
“i cant imagine any scenarios where id want to use an intel compiler”
“optimised per family, included all the copies in the output and selected the worst one on AMD”
“the intel compiler unsurprisingly generated the most close asm for the machine”
“sacrifices IEEE 764 float precision and go down to ~14 digits of precision in it's defaults”
“I recall stuff like the Intel icc compiler being expensive and desirable”
“if you have access to the Intel compiler tools”
“giving AMD cpu's a handicap”
“Often it’s faster than my own instrinsics, though not always.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.