Annoyingly it looks like sunpro has an xtarget option for sparc
 	that should do exactly what we want:

           native    Set the parameters for the best performance
                     on the host environment. The compiler chooses
                     the appropriate setting for producing 32-bit
                     binaries for the system on which the proces-
                     sor is running.

           native64  Set the parameters for the best performance
                     on the 64-bit host environment. The compiler
                     chooses the appropriate setting for producing
                     64-bit binaries for the system on which the
                     processor is running.

 	but the one for x86 is somewhat lacking in comparison:

           native    Compile for good performance on this system.
                     This option uses the best instruction set for
                     good performance on most processors without
                     major performance degradation on any of them.
                     With each new release, the definition of
                     "best" instruction set may be adjusted, if
                     appropriate.

 	I'd be curious to see what '-xdryrun -xtarget=native' reported
 	on your system or systems.

 	The other interesting questions are:
 	- how do you determine if your Solaris system is 32bit or 64bit
 	- For sparc, xtarget has a massive set of possible system names, but
 	  how can we extract the current system name (and possibly, is it
 	  even needed given -xtarget=native
 	- For x86, how can we tell if we are opteron, p4, p3, or below

-- 
 		David/absolute       -- www.NetBSD.org: No hype required --