Some incomplete and out of order excerpts from section 3.17.14 Intel 386 and AMD x86-64 Options of the GCC 4.6.3 Standard C++ Library Manual (which I hope are pertinent).
-march=cpu-type
Generate instructions for the machine type cpu-type.
The choices for cpu-type are the same as for -mtune.
Moreover, specifying -march=cpu-type implies -mtune=cpu-type.
-mtune=cpu-type
Tune to cpu-type everything applicable about the generated code,
except for the ABI and the set of available instructions.
The choices for cpu-type are:
generic
Produce code optimized for the most common IA32/AMD64/EM64T processors.
native
This selects the CPU to tune for at compilation time by determining
the processor type of the compiling machine.
Using -mtune=native will produce code optimized for the local machine
under the constraints of the selected instruction set.
Using -march=native will enable all instruction subsets supported by
the local machine (hence the result might not run on different machines).
What I found most interesting is that specifying -march=cpu-type implies -mtune=cpu-type. My take on the rest was that if you are specifying both -march & -mtune you're probably getting too close to tweak overkill.
My suggestion would be to just use -m64 and you should be safe enough since you're running inside a x86-64 Linux, correct?
But if you don't need to run in another environment and you're feeling lucky and fault tolerant then -march=native might also work just fine for you.
-m32
The 32-bit environment sets int, long and pointer to 32 bits
and generates code that runs on any i386 system.
-m64
The 64-bit environment sets int to 32 bits and long and pointer
to 64 bits and generates code for AMD's x86-64 architecture.
For what it's worth ...
Out of curiosity I tried using the technique described in the article you referenced. I tested gcc v4.6.3 in 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04 which was running as a VMware Player guest. The VMware VM was running in Windows 7 on a desktop using an Intel Pentium Dual-Core E6500 CPU.
The gcc option -m64 was replaced with just -march=x86-64 -mtune=generic.
However, compiling with -march=native resulted in gcc using all of the much more specific compiler options below.
-march=core2 -mtune=core2 -mcx16
-mno-abm -mno-aes -mno-avx -mno-bmi -mno-fma -mno-fma4 -mno-lwp
-mno-movbe -mno-pclmul -mno-popcnt -mno-sse4.1 -mno-sse4.2
-mno-tbm -mno-xop -msahf --param l1-cache-line-size=64
--param l1-cache-size=32 --param l2-cache-size=2048
So, yes, as the gcc documentation states when "Using -march=native ... the result might not run on different machines". To play it safe you should probably only use -m64 or it's apparent equivalent -march=x86-64 -mtune=generic for your compiles.
I can't see how you would have any problem with this since the intent of those compiler options are that gcc will produce code capable of running correctly on any x86-64/amd64 compliant CPU. (No?)
I am frankly astounded at how specific the gcc -march=native CPU options turned out to be. I have no idea how a CPU's L1 cache size being 32k could be used to fine tune the generated code. But apparently if there is a way to do this, then using -march=native will allow gcc to do it.
I wonder if this might result in any noticeable performance improvements?
