I found the true culprit for the huge binary size: C++ exceptions.
Lucily, I do not use them in my code.
So I report the binary sizes with the new options:
-O3 -s -fno-exceptions -fno-inline GCC: 1.25 MB ICC: 1 MB
So ICC can actaully make significantly smaller C++ code than gcc, if we use
-fno-exceptions -fno-inline
even with -O3, which enables advanced optimizations.
For me, to reduce the binary size from 2.8 MB to 1 MB is a big thing.
I found this tip in the following document:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/CodeFootprint/Articles/CompilerOptions.htmlIt is GCC and Apple specific, but the ideas and compiler options are also mostly valid for Linux and ICC.
