Isn't that already done with auto-vectorisation? http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/tree-ssa/vectorization.html It should take chunks of "vals" and automatically process X elements (depending on how many fit in the registers) at the same time via SIMD. It was available since ~2008 too.
At the gcc page you linked:
Example output using -ftree-vectorizer-verbose=2:
vect-1.c:82: note: not vectorized, possible dependence between data-refs a[i_124] and a[i_83]
Apple's patented method would appear to allow vectorization in this case, whereas gcc fails.