A specific release of the compiler (11.1) remains available for development of Linux-based applications for IA-64 (Itanium 2) processors.
When used with the Intel OneAPI HPC toolkit (see the "Description of Packaging" below) the compiler can also automatically generate Message Passing Interface calls for distributed memory multiprocessing from OpenMP directives.
They are designed to minimize stalls and to produce code that executes in the fewest possible number of cycles.
Thus, all optimizations can benefit from profile-guided feedback because they are less reliant on heuristics when making compilation decisions.
The Intel compiler provides debugging information that is standard for the common debuggers (DWARF 2 on Linux, similar to gdb, and COFF for Windows).
VTune features an easy-to-use GUI (integrated into Visual Studio for Windows, Eclipse for Linux) as well as a command-line interface.
In addition to the VTune profiler, there is Intel Advisor that specializes in vectorization optimization and tools for threading design and prototyping.