I am just wondering how fast gcc can get ? Which optimizations are thought to be included there ? please see what ibm have come up with... Maybe running java-code fast needs these optimizations at least. They seem to be specific for java-code, and not for c-code (which gcc was made for). http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/391/suganuma.html When doing FIR-filters i have found that ibm:s jdk1.3 is 20 percent faster than gcc-optimized c-code ! // Magnus Persson