http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=60826
--- Comment #2 from Dan Gohman <sunfish at mozilla dot com> --- A little more detail: I think I have seen GCC use a spill + movsd reload as a method of zeroing the non-zero-index vector elements of an xmm register, however that's either not what's happening here, or it may be happening when it isn't needed. I think the x86-64 ABI doesn't require the unused parts of an xmm return register to be zeroed, but even if it does, I can also reproduce the unnecessary spill and reload when I modify the test function above to this: void test(v2f64 w, v2f64 x, v2f64 z, double *p) { v2f64 y = f_and(w, x); *p = vector_to_scalar(f_xor(z, y)); }