Comment by thechao

If you have to stop "early" please get through the simple DCE and LVN passes.

A solid basic-block level DCE & LVN optimization along with a judicious "compile time evaluator" (simple constant folding) will let you produce code at around 80% of the level of LLVM.

Obviously, you're not going to get the magic that comes of LLVM's scalar analysis pass, but you're not going to be embarrassed with your performance, either.