The new backend is supposed to be considerably faster on floating point code. This code looks integer only, and I don't have relative performance of old/new backend for integer code.
As a wider question: Who cares much about ARMv7? ARMv8 is a completely different beast, requiring a different backend, with much better raw performance (on the same terms as x86-64). That's where languages should be concentrating their current efforts.
Big companies have plenty of access. I work for Red Hat and have one right next to my desk. I also know SUSE and MSFT have the hardware, and I'm sure many more.
I've been working on fixing bugs in the ARMv8 backend in the OCaml compiler - it's now stable, and performs very well (I can't go into exact performance details for contract reasons).
http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=5433
The new backend is supposed to be considerably faster on floating point code. This code looks integer only, and I don't have relative performance of old/new backend for integer code.
As a wider question: Who cares much about ARMv7? ARMv8 is a completely different beast, requiring a different backend, with much better raw performance (on the same terms as x86-64). That's where languages should be concentrating their current efforts.