Operating system and hardware support

This section describes the operating systems and hardware that IBM® Open XL C/C++ for AIX® 17.1.2 supports.

IBM Open XL C/C++ for AIX 17.1.2 supports the following operating systems:
  • IBM AIX 7.2: TL5 SP3 or later
  • IBM AIX 7.3: TL0 or later

See Prerequisites for a complete list of requirements.

Attention:
  • The operating system has higher requirements when you use Profile Guided Optimization (PGO) and Link Time Optimization (LTO):
    Table 1. System requirements of PGO and LTO
    Feature Minimum requirement for AIX 7.2 Minimum requirement for AIX 7.3
    PGO AIX 7.2 TL5 SP51 AIX 7.3 TL11
    LTO, which is enabled by -flto AIX 7.2 TL5 SP52 AIX 7.3 TL12
    -ffat-lto-objects AIX 7.2 TL5 SP5 AIX 7.3 TL1
    -flto=thin AIX 7.2 TL5 SP7 AIX 7.3 TL2
    Notes:
    1. If your OS version is lower than the required one, compiling with the -fprofile-generate option or using the ibm-llvm-profdata utility will fail, and linking with PGO enabled will result in link-time failures. Find details of the PGO feature in Profile Guided Optimization (PGO).
    2. LTO is also supported on IBM AIX 7.2 TL5 SP4 or earlier, and IBM AIX 7.3 TL0 SP2 or earlier; however, note that non-default visibility symbols defined in the objects that are compiled with -flto are not necessarily retained to satisfy references from the objects that are compiled without -flto during linking. You can find details of the LTO feature in Link Time Optimization (LTO).
  • If you have installed IBM XL C/C++ for AIX 16.1.0 and you are installing IBM Open XL C/C++ for AIX 17.1.2 on the same system, make sure to upgrade your existing IBM XL C/C++ for AIX 16.1.0 compiler to 16.1.0.10 or later before you install IBM Open XL C/C++ for AIX 17.1.2, otherwise your installation will fail.

The compiler, its libraries, and its generated object programs run on Power7, Power7+, Power8, Power9, or Power10 processor-based systems with the required software and disk space.

To exploit the various supported hardware configurations, the compiler provides options to tune the performance of applications according to the hardware type that runs the compiled applications.