I'm not sure I understand your deal breaker. For the platform he was targeting it produces optimal code, for other platforms it's merely slower (but not specifically slower, since the compiler is likely not a great optimizer across the board).
Vectorization is in general not applicable here since it usually requires aligned memory... not all implementations do, but most. In any case, benchmarking is more appropriate than armchair optimizing.
Vectorization is in general not applicable here since it usually requires aligned memory... not all implementations do, but most. In any case, benchmarking is more appropriate than armchair optimizing.