First, are these benchmark results jitted or non-jitted? Right now, non-jitted results are a stronger motivation for inclusion in main CPython, IMHO. 

Second, 2.7 won't receive any features / performance improvements anymore. It would be nice to have 3.2 (non-jitted) benchmark results.

Third, if removing intermediate allocations is the kind of optimizations a JIT will do anyway, does it make sense or not to make these optimizations explicit at the bytecode level? (this is really an open question, not a rhetorical one)