Gcc provides an option to increase the performance of your code. The optimization will increase the size of your code. I needed faster run time with the code that maintained 3 double linked lists. I had optimized the code by removing some obvious steps. When i used the options mentioned here, the speed increased quite a bit. The size of the executable was just 20 bytes more. I am willing to trade speed for that small increase.

One of my friends had suggested compiling the kernel with that option. He said, the system was faster. Hmm, gotta try that soon.