It's not that the engineers behind ICC failed to take the architectures of non-Intel processors into account, it's that it intentionally uses a slow path on non-Intel processors that cripples performance. We're talking assuming that the CPU doesn't support SIMD bad here. If you use virtualization to make your CPUID vendor string look like "GenuineIntel", or modify the executable to remove the Intel processor check, the "Intel optimized" builds run just as fast (barring relative processor strengths) on comparable AMD processors.
This matters because:
Until this became public, Intel gave no mention or disclaimer of suboptimal performance for ICC-generated code on non-Intel processors.
News outlets did and probably still do use ICC-generated binaries for benchmarking, giving an unfair marketing advantage to Intel processors ("Look how poorly this AMD CPU runs this binary we specifically designed to function horribly on their CPU! Buy Intel today!")
It's not that the engineers behind ICC failed to take the architectures of non-Intel processors into account, it's that it intentionally uses a slow path on non-Intel processors that cripples performance. We're talking assuming that the CPU doesn't support SIMD bad here. If you use virtualization to make your CPUID vendor string look like "GenuineIntel", or modify the executable to remove the Intel processor check, the "Intel optimized" builds run just as fast (barring relative processor strengths) on comparable AMD processors.
This matters because:
Until this became public, Intel gave no mention or disclaimer of suboptimal performance for ICC-generated code on non-Intel processors.
News outlets did and probably still do use ICC-generated binaries for benchmarking, giving an unfair marketing advantage to Intel processors ("Look how poorly this AMD CPU runs this binary we specifically designed to function horribly on their CPU! Buy Intel today!")
Almost no one is aware of this.