It would be interesting to see numbers from some less beefy
OOO cpu (like pentium pro or cortex a9). The tested
processors take the OOO to extreme lengths.<p>edit: there's a graph in <a href="http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~sudeep/teaching/ppt_554/lecture07-ilp_limits_tlp.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~sudeep/teaching/ppt_554/lectu...</a> that shows ARM A8->A9 speedup around 20% on most SPECint benchmarks, and part of that is from other improvements besides the OOO.