C Compiler Optimizations: How effective is your Compiler?

One of the challenging tasks during embedded software development is to attain efficient target code. Embedded application developers must act carefully to tune up the code by considering the requirements of the target processor. Generally application developers prefer C language for high level programming. One of the obvious reasons is that the C language set is comparatively smaller than other high level programming languages. As a result, there will always be an availability of effective C compiler for embedded application development.

As we know that a C compiler is a tool that transforms a C source code to assembly code for the target processor. During the transformation an optimizing compiler optionally performs various optimizations to produce optimized target code. Basically, an optimizing compiler should have the capability to improve the efficiency of the code and minimize the human effort.