Due to Phoronix being particularly interesting lately, how would you like a little more open-source news?

GCC is one of the most important compilers for C/C++-based software due to its ubiquity both in where it can run as well as where it can compile to. Intel has a lot of experience developing for compilers, to say the least. Creating a competing product does not stop Intel from contributing to the project, however.

Aww, looks like he wants a hug.

Intel created C/C++ language extensions known as “Cilk Plus” designed to help developers parallelize their code on multithreaded processors. Both the compiler and run-time portions of Cilk Plus has been made open source and were submitted to be included into GCC. Unfortunately, for reasons which are currently unclear, GCC completed development of version 4.8 of their software without the inclusion of Cilk Plus.

Patches developed by Intel have been available since the summer awaiting approval from the official maintainers of GCC. Because the deadline passed without inclusion of the completed code, we will allegedly need to wait until at least 2014 — maybe longer — before Cilk Plus has another chance to be included in the GCC.