Intel Fortran versus C gcc fastest programs Always look at the source code. These are only the fastest programs. Do some of them use manually vectorized SIMD? Look at the other programs. They may seem more-like a fair comparison to you. spectral-norm source secs mem gz busy cpu load Intel Fortran 0.72 1,776 638 2.85 100% 100% 99% 99% C gcc 0.72 1,100 569 2.86 100% 99% 100% 100% pidigits source secs mem gz busy cpu load Intel Fortran 0.74 4,004 981 0.75 0% 0% 100% 1% C gcc 0.73 2,848 416 0.75 1% 100% 1% 0% n-body source secs mem gz busy cpu load Intel Fortran 4.22 12 1524 4.34 100% 1% 1% 2% C gcc 4.02 796 1250 4.06 100% 0% 0% 1% mandelbrot source secs mem gz busy cpu load Intel Fortran 1.42 36,184 957 5.63 99% 100% 99% 99% C gcc 1.27 31,692 1135 5.08 100% 100% 100% 99% regex-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load Intel Fortran 0.99 176,200 2225 3.06 68% 73% 71% 98% C gcc 0.80 152,196 1397 2.03 48% 100% 54% 53% binary-trees source secs mem gz busy cpu load Intel Fortran 2.38 133,752 1148 7.45 100% 70% 70% 73% C gcc 1.79 168,760 809 5.35 64% 64% 71% 100% fannkuch-redux source secs mem gz busy cpu load Intel Fortran 10.16 11,048 1158 40.55 100% 100% 100% 100% C gcc 7.52 836 910 29.37 99% 100% 93% 99% fasta source secs mem gz busy cpu load Intel Fortran 2.06 12 1351 2.06 0% 0% 0% 100% C gcc 0.78 1,220 1463 0.79 1% 0% 0% 100% reverse-complement source secs mem gz busy cpu load Intel Fortran 3.90 985,352 1019 4.11 1% 100% 4% 1% C gcc 0.86 698,264 820 1.27 1% 18% 100% 28% k-nucleotide source secs mem gz busy cpu load Intel Fortran Make Error C gcc 3.81 130,112 1506 12.18 54% 87% 79% 100% Intel Fortran Intel(R) Fortran Intel(R) 64 Compiler for applications runn304 Build 20200925_0ing on Intel(R) 64, Version 19.1.3.304 Build 20200925_000000 Copyright (C) 1985-2020 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. FOR NON-COMMERCIAL USE ONLY C gcc gcc (Ubuntu 10.2.0-13ubuntu1) 10.2.0 all Intel Fortran programs & measurements all C gcc programs & measurements