It was due to a missing -msse compiler option !
Without this option the CPU silently discards
prefetcht2 instructions during execution.
Also added a (gcc documented) hack to prevent Intel
compiler to optimize away the prefetches.
Special thanks to Heinz for testing and suggesting
improvments. And for Jim for testing icc on Windows.
Signed-off-by: Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>