hope this isnt asking the obvious but since i cant see the makefile ill ask anyways...
do your cflags get the -O2 (or -O 1-6) flag added?
-Wall -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -Wpointer-arith -finline-functions -ffast-math \ -fno-strict-aliasing -mcpu=arm1136jf-s -mfpu=vfp -mfloat-abi=softfp