Trace cache shouldn't be the issue because the loop is simply executing too slowly. Even with very pessimistic alignment, HSW should get well more than one inst

Trace cache shouldn't be the issue because the loop is simply executing too slowly. Even with very pessimistic alignment, HSW should get well more than one instruction per clock from that loop. The culprit is probably store-to-load forwarding. Memory ops cannot wait until the coast is clear like data ops do because the addresses are not known early enough in the pipeline, so they are dispatched well before it's even known that there will be a store-to-load hit. The system to maintain the memory model is very complex, not well understood outside Intel, and might conceivably include optimistic optimizations. In such cases, it's completely feasible that issuing another store in the pipeline might reduce the amount of work that is rolled back and needs to be redone.