"As far as I know" implies that I might not know, so that's not an extraordinary claim. You haven't actually verified SROA. The scalar replacement didn't kick

"As far as I know" implies that I might not know, so that's not an extraordinary claim. You haven't actually verified SROA. The scalar replacement didn't kick in for the non-inlined method, so this could be a result of loop-specific optimizations. The code is also far from optimal, but that's besides your point of course. Also note that you're testing an RC of the latest version. There's a feature request for SROA from 2013, so it may be implemented by now: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/804315/msvc-implement-sra-optimization https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/...