There has been a lot of work recently on making GCC output faster code. But GCC isn't very fast. On my slow 750MHz Linux box (which the PIII in it is now R.I.P), it took a whole night to compile 3.4.3.
Sometimes I wonder if Sam Lauber is a Markov generator...
Please read the release notes for 4.0.0. You'll see that it is *much* faster on C++, and about as fast as 3.4.0 on other languages despite having added dozens of new passes.
Paolo
