GCC 16 Compiler Delivering Some Decent Performance Gains Over GCC 15

Written by Michael Larabel in Software on 4 May 2026 at 09:42 AM EDT. Page 2 of 4. 6 Comments.
simdjson benchmark with settings of Throughput Test: Kostya. GCC 16 was the fastest.
simdjson benchmark with settings of Throughput Test: LargeRandom. GCC 16 was the fastest.
WebP Image Encode benchmark with settings of Encode Settings: Default. GCC 16 was the fastest.
WebP Image Encode benchmark with settings of Encode Settings: Quality 100. GCC 16 was the fastest.
WebP Image Encode benchmark with settings of Encode Settings: Quality 100, Highest Compression. GCC 16 was the fastest.

Right off the start in various open-source C/C++ applications we were seeing the GCC 16 built binaries delivering slightly better performance over last year's GCC 15 compiler. Again the same compiler flags and using the same HP Z6 G5 A Threadripper workstation for benchmarking.

OCUDU benchmark with settings of Test: PDSCH Processor Benchmark, Throughput Total. GCC 16 was the fastest.
OCUDU benchmark with settings of Test: PUSCH Processor Benchmark, Throughput Total. GCC 16 was the fastest.
GraphicsMagick benchmark with settings of Operation: Swirl. GCC 16 was the fastest.
GraphicsMagick benchmark with settings of Operation: Rotate. GCC 16 was the fastest.
GraphicsMagick benchmark with settings of Operation: Resizing. GCC 16 was the fastest.
GraphicsMagick benchmark with settings of Operation: Noise-Gaussian. GCC 16 was the fastest.
GraphicsMagick benchmark with settings of Operation: HWB Color Space. GCC 16 was the fastest.

Some of the performance gains were quite measurable while in other instances just slightly trending in favor of GCC 16.

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