In using -O3 flags with gcc 3.2 on ppc, I've noticed inconsistant results in compiling. most things build, random things fail. Doing a stage1 build, parts of emerge system just don't get compiled, when you manually try to compile the parts that were missed, some things segfault. This appears to be Altivec/74xx related, as Gerk reports it doesn't happen on 75x series CPUs Until this is nailed down to something more specific than -O3 sucks, I'd recommend we don't use -O3 as part of the default make.conf
I will make adjustments for this tonight, and wholeheartedly agree that -O3 is a bad thing for ppc and gcc 3.2 final (funny thing is it worked great for gcc 3.2_pre) ?
I have discovered an architecture-independent bug in current Gentoo gcc that might be what you are seeing here: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14699