by , 3:50 PM EDT, June 6th, 2007

Intel announced two new compilers for Mac OS X on Tuesday, the Intel C++ Compiler and Fortran Professional Editions, v. 10. The new compilers offer enhanced support for multi-core processors.

The new compilers combine highly optimized compilers, performance libraries, and the Intel Threading Building Blocks.

Intel outlined the features of the new compilers:

• Automatic support for accelerating program performance on Intel's latest multi-core processors.
• Applications containing 3-D graphics or video are automatically accelerated through the use of vectors via Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE), including the latest SSE 4 instructions.
• Application performance is accelerated by multi-core processors through the use of multiple threads.

Intel pointed out that "Combining the use of vectors and threads and integrating them with a technology known as loop transformation generates greater performance on multi-core processors without requiring developers to rewrite their code."

System requirements include an Intel Core Microarchitecture system, 1 GB of RAM, Mac OS X 10.4.9 or later, Xcode 2.4.1, and gcc 4.0.

The new compilers are available immediately and priced at from US$599 to $1599. Upgrades from the prior version are available via Intel resellers. Intel also announced a special student edition that combines the compilers and several performance analysis tools at a discount.