Advanced compilation and optimization technologies designed for AIX and Power Systems

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IBM® XL C/C++ for AIX is a compiler that helps you create and maintain applications written in C/C++ for IBM Power Systems™. This compiler supports vector and parallel programming for multiprocessor systems, while maintaining a full binary compatibility with existing single processor systems. XL C/C++ for AIX complies with the latest international programming language standards providing support for code portability between multiple operating systems and hardware platforms.

IBM XL C/C++ for AIX provides the following benefits and features:

  • Optimizes application performance executing on Power Systems.
  • Provides highly-tuned libraries, including Mathematical Acceleration Subsystem, Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms, and shared memory parallelization.
  • Enables ease of application migration to Power Systems with standards compliance.

Optimizes application performance

  • Generates code that leverages the capabilities of the latest POWER8™ architecture.
  • Offers automatic parallelization of sequential programs to make use of modern multi-core processors.
  • Collects information about a program run with typical input data, and then applies transformations to the program based on that information using profile-directed feedback (PDF), ensuring application performance is optimized.

Provides highly-tuned libraries

  • Mathematical Acceleration Subsystem (MASS) consists of libraries of mathematical intrinsic functions tuned specifically for optimum performance on Power® Architecture.
  • Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) provide high-performance, algebraic functions used to perform combined matrix multiplication and addition on general matrices or their transposes, as well as to compute the matrix-vector product for a general matrix or its transpose.
  • Shared memory parallelization (SMP) runtime library supports both explicit and automated parallel processing.

Enables ease of migration to Power Systems

  • Includes full support for OpenMP V3.1 and partial support for the OpenMP V4.0 industry specification.
  • Conforms to the following programming language specifications: C89, C99, C++98, and C++03; and supports a subset of the C11 and C++11 standards.
  • Provides language extensions to support vector multimedia extension (VMX) and vector scalar extension (VSX) programming.

XL C/C++ for AIX resources

  • C/C++ RFE Feature Request

    Collaborate directly with the IBM product development teams and other product users using the Request for Enhancement (RFE) Community.

Always up-to-date system requirement reports can be dynamically generated using the Software Product Compatibility Reports (SPCR) tool.

For your convenience, the tabs below identify the supported releases of XL C/C++ for AIX from which you can select detailed system requirement reports for different contexts (by Operating System, by component). Note that clicking a link will always generate a new, up-to-date report.

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13.1.3 Release

13.1.2 Release

13.1 Release

12.1 Release

11.1 Release

IBM® XL C/C++ for AIX V13.1.3 enhancements help to increase application performance and developer productivity while maximizing your IT investments.

XL C/C++ for AIX V13.1.3 provides the following benefits and features:

  • Faster applications using the POWER8™ processor and architecture.
  • Increased programmer productivity with maximum source code portability.
  • Quality improvements and simplified administration with fixes from all release PTFs, installation enhancements, and program diagnostics.

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Faster applications

  • Architecture and tune compiler suboptions have been added to specify code generation for the POWER8 processor architecture to help improve the performance of C and C++ applications.
  • The MASS libraries of accelerated mathematical functions support the POWER8 technology and provide improved performance over the corresponding standard system library functions.
  • Built-in functions support POWER8 features including functions for vector processing, binary-coded decimal functions, cryptography, cache and data prefetch control, transactional memory, load-and-reserve and store condition instructions for improved code performance.

Increased programmer productivity

  • Support is included for additional C11 and C++11 features, including the typedef redeclaration, generic selection for choosing an expression according to a given type name at compile time, defaulted and deleted function declarations, generalized constant expressions for extending the set of expressions permitted within constant expressions, and the nullptr keyword for introducing nullptr as a null pointer constant.
  • Partial support is included for the OpenMP 4.0 industry specification, allowing development of parallel applications.
  • Entity visibility attributes indicate whether and how an entity defined in one module can be referenced or used in other modules, which can result in decreased size of shared libraries, reduced chance of symbol collision and improved efficiency of dynamic linking.

Quality improvements and simplified administration

  • The compiler now installs to its own location without needing to replace the version that is already installed.
  • The compiler delivers quality improvements by including fixes from all previous release PTFs and resolving known issues.
  • The compiler does not issue informational messages for files in the standard search paths for compiler and system header files or for files that are ultimately included by the files in the standard search paths for compiler and system header files.
  • -qinfo suboptions are added or updated with notifications indicating where synchronization is needed or detects automatic variables that are used before they are set, flagging them with informational messages at compile time.
  • -qdbgfmt suboptions are added to generate information in DWARF 4 format.

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