I would like to add that I am not actually universally opposed to using ICC for general builds but one should carefully benchmark the resulting binary in those

I would like to add that I am not actually universally opposed to using ICC for general builds but one should carefully benchmark the resulting binary in those cases.. on a non-Intel machine. As I pointed out it is reasonable to assume that the code will run slower on non-Intel chips. Basically I just replied to the OP because I was worried about people blindly doing release builds with ICC assuming it means "higher performance for free". That maybe the case in some situations but given the background of the compiler one should always make sure.